Technology

Itthe mid-&90s, and this pilot fish is the sole IT employee for a barebones operation. Ita small agricultural nonprofit, and his job includes networking, user support, IT purchasing and application development — the kind of job where you learn a ton but work your butt off.

Therea remote rural location, and fish manages an upgrade of sorts of its hand-me-down hardware: two refurbished desktops, one for a small quality lab and another for the receptionist/bookkeeper, and a server running Netware 3.12 thatno longer needed in the main office. Fish tells the remote users to be sure to store all the accounting files, documents and quality records on the server and not their workstations. He also installs an external tape backup unit on the laboratory computer so it can do double duty at night as the server backup workstation. And therean ancient 80286 laptop sitting in a spare room running a dialup email gateway to the organizationISP.

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Look, this is the last post I&m writing in 2019 and I&m tired. But I can&t let the year close without taking stock of how well tech stocks did this year. It was bonkers.

So letmark the yearconclusion with some notes for our future selves. Yes, we know that the Nasdaq has been setting new records and SaaS had a good year. But we need to dig in and get the numbers out so that we can look back and remember.

Letcap off this year the way it deserves to be remembered, as a kick-ass trip &round the sun for your local, public technology company.

Keeping score

We&ll start with the indices that we care about:

• The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rose 35% in 2019
• The SaaS-heavy Bessemer Cloud Index rose 41% this year

Next, the highest-value U.S.-based technology companies:

• Microsoft was up around 55% in 2019
• Apple managed an 86% gain in the year
• Not be left out, Facebook rose 57%
• Amazon posted its own gain of 23% in 2019
• Alphabet managed to grow by 29%, as well

Now letturn to some companies that we care about, even if they are smaller than the Big Five:

• Salesforce? Up 19% this year
• Adobe was up 46% in 2019, which was astounding
• Intel picked up 28% in the year, making it no slouch
• Even Oracle managed to gain 17% in 2019

And so on.

The technology industryepic run has been so strong that The Wall Street Journal noted this morning that, powered by tech companies, U.S. stocks &are poised for their best annual performance in six years.& The Journal highlighted the performance of Apple and Microsoft in particular for helping drive the boom. I wonder why.

How long will we live in the neighborhood of Nasdaq 9,000? How long can two tech companies be worth more than $1 trillion at the same time? How long can the biggest tech companies be worth a combined $4.93 trillion (I remember when $3 trillion for the Big Five was news, and I recall when the group reach a collective value of $4 trillion).¹

But the worst trade in recent years has been the pessimists& gambit. No matter what, stocks have kept going up, short-term hiccoughs and other missteps aside.

For nearly everyone, that is. While tech stocks in general did very well, some names that we all know did not. Letclose on those reminders that a rising tide lifts only most boats.

2019 naughty list

Several of the most lackluster public tech companies were 2019 technology IPOs, interestingly enough. Who didn&t do well? Uber earns a spot on the naughty list for not only being underwater from its IPO price, but also from its final private valuations. And as you guessed, Lyft is down from its IPO price as well, which is not good.

Some 2019 IPOs did well in the middle of the year, but fell a little flat as the year came to a close. Pinterest, Beyond Meat and Zoom meet that criteria, for example. And some SaaS companies struggled, even if we think they will reach $1 billion in revenue in time.

But it was mostly a party. The public markets were good, and tech stocks were great. This helped create another 100+ unicorns in the year.

Such was 2019. On to 2020!

1. In time, those numbers will look small. But sitting here on December 31, 2019, they appear huge and towering and, it must be said, somewhat perilously stacked.

The Pallone-Thrune TRACED Act, a bipartisan bit of legislation that should make life harder for the villains behind robocalls, was signed into law today by the president. Itstill possible to get things done in D.C. after all!

We&ve covered the TRACED Act several times previously, as robocalls are, in addition to being horribly annoying, a uniquely annoying high-tech threat. Using clever targeting and spoofing technology, scammers are placing millions of calls that at best irritate and at worst take advantage of the vulnerable.

The new law won&t end that practice overnight, but it does add some useful tools to regulators& toolboxes. Herehow I summarized the billprovisions earlier this month:

• Extends FCCstatute of limitations on robocall offenses and increases potential fines
• Requires an FCC rulemaking helping protect consumers from spam calls and texts (this is already underway)
• Requires annual FCC report on robocall enforcement and allows for it to formally recommend legislation
• Requires adoption on a reasonable timeline of the STIR/SHAKEN framework for preventing call spoofing
• Prevents carriers from charging for the above service, and shields them from liability for reasonable mistakes
• Requires the attorney general to convene an interagency task force to look at prosecution of offenders
• Opens the door to Justice Department prosecution of offenders
• Establishes a handful of specific cutouts and studies to make sure the rules work and interested parties are giving feedback

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) took a break from other business to laud the enactment of the law:

And FCC Chairman Ajit Paipraise was effusive in a statement his office sent along:

I applaud Congress for working in a bipartisan manner to combat illegal robocalls and malicious caller ID spoofing. And I thank the President and Congress for the additional tools and flexibility that this law affords us. Specifically, I am glad that the agency now has a longer statute of limitations during which we can pursue scammers and I welcome the removal of a previously-required warning we had to give to unlawful robocallers before imposing tough penalties.

And I thank the American people for never letting us forget how fed up they are with scam, spoofed robocalls. Ittheir voices that power our never-ceasing push to fight back against the scourge of robocalls and malicious spoofing.

Of course the new law isn&t a magic wand; The FCC is still limited in what it can do and how quickly it can act. Even major fines like this $120 million one have had a negligible effect on the nefarious industry. &Like emptying the ocean with a teaspoon,& said Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel at the time.

Herehoping the TRACED Act amounts to more than a bigger spoon. We&ll find out as regulators and the mobile industry grow into their new capabilities and begin the long process of actually applying them to the problem. It may take months or more to see any real abatement, but at least we&re taking concrete steps.