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| 2001 News and Press Releases |
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HEADLINE ARCHIVED:
Is Pessimism The New Optimism?
By: Scott Kirsner
The Boston Globe. October 22, 2001
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Excerpt: Back in the go-go '90s, idealistic visions of the future drove stock prices skyward. We'd all get customized menu suggestions over the Web, have groceries delivered direct to our cupboards, and surf the wireless Internet over a high-speed home network while lounging in a cushy sofa purchased from Furniture.com. Now, we've entered a bizarro world where the stock prices of some technology companies are being driven by hopelessness, not hope. Companies that make biometric security systems capable of picking known terrorists out of a crowd have seen their share prices spike since trading resumed Sept. 17, and the makers of devices that can quickly detect the presence of pathogens like anthrax and smallpox have followed. How intense is the action around these companies? Cepheid, a Silicon Valley company that makes technology for pathogen detection, has just $10 million in sales, but has lately been vying with Cisco ($22 billion in sales) as the hottest topic of conversation on Yahoo's stock market message boards.
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