Buy, Lie, and Sell High: How Investors Lost Out on Enron and the Internet Bubble

How This Book Was Written

So a small team and I went to work studying the great Internet bubble. We looked at the various players who were involved in the process by which venture funds and entrepreneurs built companies, and then with the investment banks, took them public. We made a list of how the venture funds changed their investment criteria as the bubble developed, and how investment banks changed their criteria for taking firms public. We looked at how the mutual funds shifted their investment criteria so that many funds became loaded with dot-com and telecom stocks. We looked at Alan Greenspan's warnings, and at the inflation and then bursting of the bubble. We looked at who made money in the outcome, and who lost.

We have read the literature ...