Interesting! I hadn’t seen this article, but now I’m curious how many of these were “fake” internet companies. Given it being 1996, it probably shouldn’t be too heavily dominated by fly by night internet companies (yet). I’d be curious how these numbers compare to say 1986 as another data point.
Not sure that thesis holds water. Michael Mauboussin published the paper, "The Incredible Shrinking Universe of Stocks: The Causes and Consequences of Fewer U.S. Equities" in 2017 [0].
The Big Ideas: IPO's and being public are more expensive with less benefit while at the same time M&A has flourished.
Even outside of the dotcom context the technology nowadays rewards consolidation.
All publicly listed internet portals of the 90s (Yahoo, Infoseek, Excite, Ask Jeeves) have been essentially overrun by Google. Retail had to either consolidate, slim down or delist due to a private equity infusion, with AMZN emerging as a clear winner.
