As if the sense of dot-com déjà vu wasn’t strong enough already.
On Thursday, investors mature enough (to employ a polite euphemism for “old,” and thereby spare myself the depressing reality of being 42) to remember the last major tech bubble emitted a wry chuckle to see Cisco at the top of the leaderboard.
In March of 2000, Cisco was (briefly) the most valuable company in the world. The market, in its infinite wisdom, bid up the shares to the point that Cisco was worth some $565 billion, more than Microsoft at the time.
It was all down hill from there. By May of 2000, Cisco was down 40% from the highs hit just a few months previous. When it was all said and done — i.e., when the proverbial dust settled on the bubble demolition in October of 2002 — Cisco was down 90% from its March 27, 2000 peak.
Fast forward a quarter century and Cisco, like Intel, is back. Just in general and back to record highs.
On the heels of a Wednesday evening beat and raise which included all manner of upbeat commentary on the company’s prospects in the AI ecosystem, Cisco soared more than 14% for what was on track to be its best day in nearly 15 years.
With Thursday’s advance, the stock was up more than 50% for 2026. Its 14-day RSI was nearly 88. It’s up six weeks running and more than 20% this week alone. I could go on. The superlatives are endless.
It’s difficult to overstate how grimly amusing this’ll seem to a lot of market veterans. Although Cisco was an exception among dot-com darlings in being a real company with real revenue and a real fundamental claim on “the future,” it’s nevertheless synonymous with the bust.
Assuming the market gods have a sense of humor (and there’s a lot of evidence to suggest they do), it’d be so very fitting if a melt-up in shares of Cisco was once again the bell at the top.
I should emphasize that there’s nothing implausible about the idea of Cisco capitalizing on demand from AI data center operators. This is just another example of market participants belatedly realizing that AI isn’t just Nvidia GPUs the same way human bodies aren’t just brains.
The question’s whether $9 billion in expected orders from the hyper-scalers during the company’s current fiscal year, and a for-now-rosy outlook for data center demand more generally, justifies the run-up in the stock.
I’m not the guy with the answer on that particular point. I’m just the guy with the dot-com déjà vu jokes which, happily, never get old for those old enough to appreciate them.
On Thursday, in an interview with CNBC, CEO Chuck Robbins conceded he doesn’t yet have “complete visibility” when it comes to bookings from hyper-scalers and other AI data center operators.
Nevertheless, Cisco “feel[s] good” about where things are headed. Tech, Robbins declared, is entering a “networking super-cycle.”
I knew you were my age.
I’m 43 and had a similar feeling. Probably part of why I love reading H’s perspective on things.
Now I know who didn’t read the March monthly. 🙂
https://heisenbergreport.com/2026/03/06/42/
My aging research indicates one needs the right dose (i.e., running in your case) to slow down biological age. My product will hit the market one day. Hang on.
Well if we are going to allow ageism comments now that Equity, Inclusion, and Fairness are no longer in vogue or practiced. I can weigh in at nearly 30 years senior with a similar ageism comment.
I like to read and listen to the younger cohort. I find many of the older cohort is decidedly out of touch with reality as it is. Just today I was able to re-enforce one of my many prejudices. The prejudice is that AI is going to improve quality of engineering work. I was listening to how a young engineer was using ai in his work and it was to improve quality of the work. So now I feel completely justified that my age is an asset even if it is not.
Only the most elderly of millennials can put this fine of a point on it, as it were.
I remember March of 2000 shaking my head watching yet another ATH on CNBC in the media room where I worked. It felt surreal but I was happy I owned Munder NetNet. A year later the company I worked for shut down, and my portfolio was being devastated. That was the first time Mr. Market punched me, and many others, in the face. But here’s the trick. Don’t sell the rise, sell the fall. That way there’s no second guessing. Currently, however, there is a major difference. Back then Greenspan blinked and started hiking. Now, the Feadury Secretary and his Sock Puppet have a mandate from the One to “Run it Hot.” At the 2000 top the NFCI was near 0. Now it’s -.50 and getting looser.
In 2000 my wife and I were completely out of the market. Not because we knew what was coming. We were just naive. It was a different time. On-line trading existed, but there were still brokerage fees for every transaction. Most people owned stocks in the form of mutual funds in their 401k or IRA. My wife and I would see the market rise, shake our heads, and simply agree it it must be a bubble. When the whole thing collapsed we didn’t lose much. 2001 was a true speculative bubble, meaning that the market gave-up just about everything it had gained in the run-up. Imagine if that were to happen again?
When CSCO was rampaging higher the first time, much of the buying was based on the belief that the company was a great “pick & shovel” trade. As in, “I don’t know who the winners from the internet will be, but they all depend on the networks that carried the data. Does that sound familiar??
When the euphoria was peaking, one writer pointed out that based on the revenue projections inherent in the forward sales estimates (P/S), every man, woman and child on earth would be working for Cisco within ten years.
After the bubble was pricked, Cisco routers which had cost tens of thousands of dollars were being offered below $2000 as many internet startups went bankrupt and were liquidated. (Aeron chairs started being offered well below $100 as well.)
And NVDA has a $5.5 trillion $ market cap!
Come on, say no more.
I have a little crush on Jensen. I heard he has a Nvidia tattoo and I think i know where his beach house is. 🙂
So what? None of that market cap is actual money owned by anyone. If you have NVDA you can feel wealthy but it’s not money. Market cap is an unrealized guess about what an asset is worth in converted to cash (you know, that horrible fiat money circulating around out there). Trouble is, to realize an asset’s worth it must be sold for cash. When that happens one never realizes any more of the long-term money flow they might have earned in the future. Now that one has got the actual money from a asset, one has to either be satisfied with the cash or reinvest it in something better that what one sold. I never look at market cap for stocks because I’m trying to invest for future cash flows, taking whatever cash I can get day to day from my current investments, not selling them for cash I have to find a home for. Every year I check my cash for its current flow. So does the IRS. Anything else is guesswork I can’t spend. Neither can the company that market cap represents. Last I saw only one company owns physical assets over a trillion dollars. That’s actual stuff like buildings, land, cash, etc. The company is Berkley Hathaway. That’s real stuff, realized stuff. It’s the largest actual asset pile, not market cap; realized assets owned.
I’ve seen the euphoria twice, felt it once myself, and I don’t feel like we’re quite there yet but getting closer. I was 30 years old for the dot com bust, living hand to mouth on my sailboat in the Dominican Republic on $400 a month in savings from having spent the previous year and a half running a dive boat in the Turks and Caicos for $1200 a month plus tips. I distinctly remember the ‘retired early’ boomers gloating about their investments, one guy bragging about how he’s making more every week on his investments than he did when he was working. “I made $5,000 last week!” as he offered to pay me $5 an hour to do fiberglass work on his boat. I remember feeling so bad that I had $0 investments while those around me were rolling in it. Eventually in 2003 we bought a piece of land, lived in an RV on it, put a house on in 2005, and by 2006 I was feeling like the retired guy, slogging away in a factory for $35,000 a year while my property rose $50,000 and I was wondering why I was going into work and making myself sick every day when I could just ride my investment up like the old man in the Dominican Republic was doing.
That feeling like “This is easy money” has become my warning signal. Probably hurts me more than it helps, but that Deja Vu feeling you mention always makes me nervous about success. But it is starting to feel like those AI investments are easy money…