The NASDAQ finished last week down 8% from its early March high.  Not quite yet an “official”, 10% correction, but close.

Calling tech bubbles is notoriously difficult, but I propose two additional signs that the bull-run in tech stocks is over.   For me the beginning of the end of the last tech bubble was marked two basic themes that are now recurring:

• Venture Investment in food and grocery delivery services and
• Tech company commitments to gigantic real estate projects

Let’s start with the Grocery Delivery Bubble Indicator, or GDBI as I will call it henceforth. We Americans are fat and lazy.  The tech bubble investment theory goes that if we could, we would sit on our couch and order items from the grocery store with a magic wand. During the last bubble, the GDBI peaked when the geniuses behind Webvan began building their warehouses to alleviate the pain of shopping.

In the last couple of weeks, the GDBI seems to be peaking again with GrubHub, Amazon Fresh, Amazon Dash, Blue Apron, etc.  When venture investment starts pouring into the expense categories folks are least likely to need to buy online, it’s a sign of a frothy world. Take a look at these charts from Business Insider.

As to the high-profile real estate deal bubble indicator (HPREDBI?), during the last bubble several Silicon Valley companies made questionable real estate decisions committing to gigantic leases that crippled their companies (I’m not naming names).  I’m no expert in SF real estate, but the news Friday that Salesforce will lease more than half of the tallest building to be built in SF (by 2017) reminds me of “Rome before the fall” type moves that I saw in 2000.  This part of the news report especially caught my eye:

The cloud-computing company will pay $560 million over 15 1/2 years to lead developer Boston Properties for 30 floors at Mission and Fremont streets.

The deal for 714,000 square feet marks the biggest corporate lease in the city in recent memory, outstripping J.P. Morgan’s 650,000-square-foot site on Mission Street in 2000. (my emphasis added).

Robert Shiller won a Nobel Prize, in part, for his work on bubbles in asset prices. I think my GDBI and HPREDBI may be destined for the same type of fame. 😉

Of course, I am saying all of this with tongue planted firmly in cheek, but it does seem these days that anything that can be:

• sold in the cloud,
• as a subscription,
• and delivered same or next day

can raise a ton of money–Legos, meal assembly kits, groceries, shaving supplies, and man wipes are examples.  I’ve already suggested we add pets and significant others to this list. I’m not sure what else is left.