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Finance and Economics
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Buttonwood: Hope rebooted
梧桐樹專欄：重燃希望
Tech stocks have regained their dotcom-era highs.
科技股已經重獲了信息泡沫時代的高點。
Cast your mind back to when Bill Clinton was president, Tony Blair and Vladimir Putin were fresh-faced new leaders and tweeting was strictly for the birds.
回想一下克林頓當美國總統，布萊爾和普京還是稚嫩的新領導人，tweeting只是用來形容鳥兒叫聲的詞語的時代。
That was when technology stocks, as measured by the S&P 500 tech index, last traded at their current levels.
以標準普爾500指數來計算，那時候的科技股交易量和現在差不多。
The horrendous decline in share prices that followed the peak in 2000 was the first financial calamity of this millennium.
新世紀的第一次經濟災難是2000年股票價格從頂點瘋狂下跌。
The dotcom crash had much less impact on the broader economy than the mortgage and banking crisis of 2007-08.
互聯網股票市場的崩潰對整個經濟的影響遠沒有像2007-08年房貸款和銀行業危機對經濟造成的影響嚴重。
Nevertheless, the tech revival has caused some twitchiness among investors.
然而，科技復興還是引起一些投資者的警惕。
Might history be repeating itself?
那么歷史還會重演嗎？
In the intervening years the world, and the tech industry, have changed a lot.
在這些年間，世界和科技行業都發生了很大的變化。
In the late 1990s enthusiasm for tech shares was so great that the sector's market value rose far faster than its earnings.
二十世紀90年代，人們對科技股的投資熱情空前高漲，以至于科技股的行業市值遠遠超過了它帶來的收益。
The gap is nothing like as great today.
今天兩者差距遠沒有當時那么大。
Back then, leading firms like Microsoft and Oracle were valued at more than 20 times their annual revenues, let alone earnings.
當時，像微軟和甲骨文這些主要的公司市值被估算為其年收入的20倍以上，更不用說它的利潤了。
This time around, with the exception of Facebook, price-to-revenue ratios are much less stretched.
而現在除了Facebook，股價收入比率并不是很大。
What boosted tech businesses in the late 1990s was that everyone was discovering the internet at the same time.
二十世紀90年代末期促進高科技企業發展的原因是當時所有人都在探索互聯網。
Both companies and consumers were buying computers and associated items like modems.
公司和消費者都在買電腦和如調節調制器這樣的關聯件。
That led to rapid revenue growth.
這就導致收入的快速增長。
But the sudden enthusiasm for tech was also its greatest weakness; every college graduate seemed to have a plan to start a dotcom company.
但是對科技的突然熱情也是最大的弱點；每一個大學畢業生都計劃開一家網絡公司。
The market became overcrowded.
市場變得異常擁擠。
Investors struggled to tell the long-term winners from the losers.
投資人也在努力辨別長期的贏家和輸家。
譯文來源考研英語時事閱讀
