One of the fastest growing fields in the American economy, and the one in which there is an intense personal interest in joining upon graduation, is the field of helping Internet Companies go public. This is a field that is expected to grow to some $60 billion by the end of this century, a growth that is unheralded in business history. It is a field, however, that is changing so rapidly that it is often hard to determine which economic indicators reflect the actual trends of the field. For instance, there has seldom been an industry where companies that have yet to make a profit (and that even state they might not be profitable for five more years) can and do float sizable IPOs that sell for many times unrealized earnings. However, there are certain macroeconomic indicators that merit watching and they will be discussed in this short essay.
Since E-commerce on the Internet embraces many diverse industries, and since the concept of studying economic indicators is quite similar to doing fundamental stock analysis, the two procedures have grown to be an important management tool. The sophisticated manager must be concerned not only with how his company is performing in relation to its immediate competition and within its industry sector but also with a wide variety of socio-economic events that can affect the business viability.
Until recently, the study of macroeconomic indicators was ignored at business schools, argues Roger Murray, who revised the bible of fundamental research, Security Analysis. He points out that most analysts jumped straight from college, where they typically studied finance, to a brokerage, where many soon earned six-figure salaries for writing the research reports on companies and industries that brokerage salespeople use to sell stocks. Johnson says that "in most schools, fundamental analysis is just not taught. Many analysts take the financial statement they are given by the compan
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