The eBay bubble has finally burst-ish with shares taking a seventeen per cent fall as the online auctioneer raises revenue by just 44 per cent year-on-year. That you can expand so quickly and be seen to have failed shows how unrealistic the expectations that drive markets can be. And how short-lived such expectations can be. And that markets never learn from experience… it’s as if internet and technology stocks haven’t crashed before.

I’ve never really got into eBay. But I’ve dabbled, raising £77 selling Gmail invites which were worthless within a week (because Google flooded the market, like everyone knew they would). Over Christmas my sister revealed she was into eBay, but then explained that she doesn’t actually bid, tending to click ‘Buy it now’ rather than go through the auction palaver, which sounds like missing the point to me. But then wasn’t internet auctioneering always going to turn out to be a fad and isn’t it worrying that those who invest our pension funds can’t spot a short term trend until actually burns?

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