“Proceed with Caution” in this “Virtual Insanity”

Bloomberg editor-at-large and TV host Trish Regan shares some insight on what’s roiling the stock market these days in this commentary at USA Today that is full of contradiction that quickly becomes apparent in the first two paragraphs which, by themselves, may be enough to send investors scurrying back up to their hotel room to sell some tech stocks.

Use of the term “virtual” was prompted by the recent Facebook acquisition of Oculus, the virtual reality headset maker, however, it was probably ill-advised to combine virtual with insanity when referring to bubbly tech stocks.

The recent sell-off in names such as Amazon, Facebook and Netflix is spurring many to wonder whether investors are waking up to the virtual insanity that’s gripping the technology space.

It’s still too early to tell how this plays out; however, there are signs that suggest investors should proceed with caution.

Take the new term to describe a hot new tech company. Forget start-up or pre-revenue. Instead, try this: pre-product. It carries more cachet.

With U.S. markets opening just a short time ago, stocks are shrugging off their recent difficulties and the latest developments in Ukraine, but that may not last.

If it doesn’t and this becomes a much more serious decline for share prices, at least we’ll have those wonderful images of people wearing Oculus headsets.

It’s just too bad that we couldn’t get anyone wearing a virtual reality headset to ring the opening bell on some stock exchange – that would have been priceless.