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Is Amazon/Whole Foods This Cycle’s AOL/Time Warner – A Sign That The Party’s Over?

Towards the end of the 1990s tech stock bubble, “new media” – i.e., the Internet — was ascendant and old media like magazines, newspapers and broadcast TV were yesterday’s news. This was reflected in relative stock valuations, which gave Internet pioneer AOL the ability to buy venerable media giant Time Warner for what looked (accurately in retrospect) like an insane amount of money. 

When the next bear market hits, though, that kind 

of money might seem a bit hubristic. 

As with so many other extraordinary recent market events (record-high stock prices combined with record-low volatility, 

negative yields on government bonds, soaring debt/GDP combined with falling inflation), 

Amazon/Whole Foods might or might not be the 

bell that rings at the top. 

But when the history of this time is written, 

there’s a good chance that it will be somewhere on the list.

 DYI