Investing in tech IPOs: Lessons from the 17th century

Stockmarket echoes from history

James B. Holmes, senior vice president at Winton, provides an insight into what markets were like during the 1600s and how, much like today, investors capitalised on technological innovation.

An equities boom followed by a queue of tech companies seeking stockmarket flotations - not the current bull market in equities, but the 1690s. Innovation evangelists would do well to heed the unhappy experience of many investors at the time. Following the start of the Nine Years' War with France in 1688, England's trade with the rest of the world was badly disrupted, forcing the nation's merchants to find other uses for their capital. Much of this capital was ploughed into the nascent stockmarket and fuelled a boom in domestic joint stock companies, many of which had been established...