March 7, 2000: $149.875

3/7/2000 - NASDAQ: MCTR - $149.875

For months our stock rose at a breakneck pace. It was all the buzz of the office, a bigger deal than the new identity even. When we broke $100 it was thrilling, when we broke $120 it was unbelievable, $130.. $140.. until we maxed-out at $149.875.

Let's do some quick math here – on March 7, 2000 we had 22.4 million outstanding shares so we were worth $3,357,200,000. We had no idea where it was going to stop, $200 a share didn't seem impossible even if it seemed completely unreasonable.

Of course I didn't own any stock at the time. I had a bunch of stock options at $30 but didn't think to cash them out. I was probably waiting for the price to break $150. I wasn't the only one, I can only think of one single programmer on my team who had the foresight to dump all his shares when the stock first surpassed $90.

Three days later the NASDAQ would hit its all-time high followed by a two and a half year descent.

Despite positive earning reports in the coming months, our stock went into a free fall. It's amazing how closely our stock followed the NASDAQ trends. Unlike the dot-com companies we were actually making money, not enough to warrant the stock price but we weren't a black hole for cash like many of them. Still our price was horribly inflated and we were due for a massive correction.

4/24/2000 - NASDAQ: MCTR - $40.25