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>The companies taking on the most risk in terms of debt are for the most part not traditional tech. Think Chevron, GE, and other industrial and energy companies

>The companies taking on the most risk in terms of debt are for the most part not traditional tech. Think Chevron, GE, and other industrial and energy companies. You mean, precisely what would be considered 'traditional tech' in any sane world? :P Industrial and energy companies have a much larger and more important impact on the economy than information technology. We live in the strange topsy turvy world where 'information technology' has somehow been narrowed to "that guy who fixes your computer and administrates the servers" and 'tech' narrowed to mean what 'information technology' should.

nostrademons 8y ago
It's because growth has been concentrated in software for a decade or two, and people only pay attention to growth. It's actually more absurd than you note: "tech" today means "Internet tech", and people have largely forgotten that less than a generation ago IBM, HP, Sun, Oracle, Intel, AMD, and Microsoft were all "tech" companies. (You'd have to go back two generations for Chevron and GE to be "tech".) But that's the nature of psychology. Everything that was around when you were a kid is just part of the natural order of things, while the only new and exciting technology is the stuff you just heard of in the last year or two. (It's pretty likely the pendulum will shift again in a year or two, and FAANG will no longer be tech, which will be reserved for crypto[currency - this is another good example, where if you're > 30 'crypto' means 'encryption' while if you're < 30 it means 'cryptocurrency'], robotics, self-driving cars, drones, and AI.)
- perl4ever 8y ago
  I find it fascinating that your glib list of "cool new tech stuff" - cryptocurrency, robotics, self-driving cars, drones, and AI, seems to have a huge characteristic blind spot. There's a major industry that for some reason people don't mention these days when they are imagining where the future is coming from, and I find it entirely inexplicable that it just doesn't register. If I told you what it is, you probably would find it too obvious in retrospect, so I won't. I am over 30 BTW. And no, it's not green energy.
  - joejerryronnie 8y ago
    My guess is you're talking about biotech/medicine/health. This is the next sector poised to have transformative growth over the next 20 years.

nostrademons 8y ago

It's because growth has been concentrated in software for a decade or two, and people only pay attention to growth. It's actually more absurd than you note: "tech" today means "Internet tech", and people have largely forgotten that less than a generation ago IBM, HP, Sun, Oracle, Intel, AMD, and Microsoft were all "tech" companies. (You'd have to go back two generations for Chevron and GE to be "tech".) But that's the nature of psychology. Everything that was around when you were a kid is just part of the natural order of things, while the only new and exciting technology is the stuff you just heard of in the last year or two. (It's pretty likely the pendulum will shift again in a year or two, and FAANG will no longer be tech, which will be reserved for crypto[currency - this is another good example, where if you're > 30 'crypto' means 'encryption' while if you're < 30 it means 'cryptocurrency'], robotics, self-driving cars, drones, and AI.)

perl4ever 8y ago
I find it fascinating that your glib list of "cool new tech stuff" - cryptocurrency, robotics, self-driving cars, drones, and AI, seems to have a huge characteristic blind spot. There's a major industry that for some reason people don't mention these days when they are imagining where the future is coming from, and I find it entirely inexplicable that it just doesn't register. If I told you what it is, you probably would find it too obvious in retrospect, so I won't. I am over 30 BTW. And no, it's not green energy.
- joejerryronnie 8y ago
  My guess is you're talking about biotech/medicine/health. This is the next sector poised to have transformative growth over the next 20 years.