In the late 1990s, seemingly every new tech startup with a “.com” in its name saw its stock rocket. It was a one-dimensional frenzy: capital chased speculative growth to the exclusion of everything else.
Precious metals languished (gold hit a 20-year low around $250/oz in 1999, and cash was still king thanks to a strong dollar and tame inflation.
Fast-forward to today’s market, and the landscape could not be more different. Rather than a narrow tech bubble, we’re witnessing what one might call a triple bull market – stocks, and safe-haven assets like gold (and even bitcoin) are all charging higher together. Investors are piling into anything but cash, not out of blind hype but out of rational fear of what cash represents: inflation, currency devaluation, and sovereign debt risks.
Whispers of “dot-com 2.0” have grown louder as tech stocks soar on an AI narrative. The parallels with 1999 are indeed tempting – a transformative technology story, falling interest rates acting as fuel, and a sense of euphoria in certain pockets of the market. However, a closer look reveals crucial differences.
Unlike the late ’90s, today’s rally isn’t built on eye-watering valuations of profitless companies.
Yes, stocks are not cheap by historical measures, especially in the U.S.
However in 1999, many high-flying tech names had no earnings at all; by contrast, the present tech leaders are corporate cash machines!
The top companies driving this market generate substantial profits and cash flow, underpinning their valuations with real fundamentals.
Moreover, unlike the U.S.-centric dot-com boom, today’s rally has been remarkably broad-based across geographies and asset classes. In the late 1990s, gold was an afterthought – a stagnant relic while dot-com stocks stole the show.
Today, gold has been joining – even leading – the party. In fact, gold has outpaced many risk assets lately, surging 46% in the first nine months of 2025 to breach all-time highs near $4,000/oz. That’s a startling contrast to 1999, when gold’s price was scraping multi-decade lows.
Chart Powered by TradingView signifying the correlation of AUXUSD to SPX
That signals something very different from a speculative bubble: it suggests investors are hedging their bets, seeking both growth and safety simultaneously. In hindsight, it’s clear that this market’s foundation is broader and more solid than the froth of the dot-com era.
What exactly is driving this unusual regime of concurrently booming equities, surging gold, and even a revival in crypto? In a word: fear – not fear of markets, but fear of cash. It’s an “anything-but-cash” era where investors are rationally fleeing fiat.
Decades-high inflation, aggressive monetary easing (and now tightening whiplash), and unprecedented sovereign debt levels have all eroded confidence in holding money in its safest form.
The U.S. dollar, once the world’s ultimate safe haven, is losing altitude. In 2025, the Dollar Index slid about 10%, even amid global uncertainty.
Gold’s surge past $4,000 and Bitcoin’s climb beyond $125,000 tell the same story: rising distrust in fiat currencies and a flight to scarcity. Capital is rotating out of cash and bonds and into hard assets and productive equities.
Even mega-cap U.S. tech giants have become new-age safe havens — combining scarcity with earnings power. In a world fleeing fiat decay, investors would rather own dominant franchises than idle dollars.
The result? A heavily concentrated stock market advance that can appear bubbly on the surface, but is grounded in the sheer financial might of a handful of firms.
img source : https://www.finhacker.cz/top-20-sp-500-companies-by-market-cap/
In other words, most stocks did OK – but the biggest stocks did phenomenally well, pulling the entire index up with them.
Related Read : What if you only bought the top 5 U.S mega cap for the last 10 years
Indeed, the top-heavy nature of this bull market is extreme by any historical standard. The S&P 500’s gains have been disproportionately driven by a short list of AI-focused behemoths. Consider that since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 – a proxy for the start of the AI frenzy – roughly 75% of the S&P 500’s total return has come from “AI data center ecosystem” stocks (think NVIDIA, Big Tech, etc.)These same names accounted for about 80% of the index’s earnings growth and an astonishing 90% of its capital expenditures growth over that period.
In short, this is a simultaneous triple bull market. A rally in risk assets (stocks), in scarcity assets (gold, crypto), and in quality assets (cash-rich, monopoly-like companies). It’s a regime defined not by irrational expectations so much as by rational escape – an exodus from cash towards anything with a yield, a use-case, or a hard supply limit.
No market regime lasts forever, and even a rational bull market can break if the underlying drivers reverse. What would signal that the “anything-but-cash” phase is ending (or at least pausing)? Several potential inflection points bear watching:
The Return of Cash Comfort
Rising real interest rates could end the rush into risk assets. With 5-year TIPS yields around 1.2% (a 15-year high) and inflation expectations near 2.5%, cash and Treasury bonds are becoming more attractive. If safe assets start offering 3–5%+ real returns, investors will likely rotate out of gold, crypto, and stocks. In hindsight, ultra-low rates ignited this triple bull market—normalisation could cool it.
Earnings or Innovation Disappointment
The market’s strength hinges on a few mega-cap tech leaders and AI optimism. Much of 2023’s rebound came from multiple expansion, not actual profit growth. If AI spending slows or big tech earnings disappoint, even a small stumble among the “Magnificent Seven” could weigh heavily on the S&P 500. The rally needs real earnings growth, not just hype, to sustain itself.
Global Rotation or Broadening Out
Money is quietly flowing out of U.S. growth stocks—over $150 billion left in the first three quarters of 2025—and into cheaper international and value markets. Investors are eyeing European dividend stocks and emerging-market industrials with stronger growth at lower valuations. If this continues, leadership could shift from U.S. tech toward a more balanced global and sectoral mix.
This market isn’t a replay of the dot-com bubble – it’s something arguably more complex.
In 2025, the global shift away from cash became unmistakable. JPMorgan described it as a “familiar pattern of dollar debasement,” with investors reallocating into real assets to escape the erosion of fiat value. The U.S. Dollar Index (DXY) reflected this loss of confidence, sliding nearly 10% during the year—one of its weakest stretches in decades.
Meanwhile, capital continued to flee traditional cash holdings. U.S. money market fund assets surged to $6.4 trillion in 2023, fuelled by a record $1.2 trillion in annual inflows, as investors sought yield and safety outside low-interest bank deposits. That migration hit a crescendo in March 2023, when roughly $480 billion exited U.S. bank accounts in a single month.
Together, these shifts tell a clear story: investors aren’t just chasing returns. They’re actively escaping the decay of cash in a world where holding dollars no longer feels secure.