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By Ben King, 19 March 2002 16:40

NEWS US technology investors lost $1.7tr in the internet boom, but there are better times ahead, according to a report written by one of the leading architects of the dot-com bubble, Mary Meeker. Meeker, the Morgan Stanley investment analyst whose outspoken promotion of dot-com companies won her the nickname 'Queen of the Internet,' told the Financial Times: "The past two years have been painful ones for technology investors, to say the least." The comments came as Morgan Stanley published its eighth annual Technology IPO Yearbook, written by a team led by Meeker. The report illustrates just what a poor year it has been for high-tech initial public offerings, with just 19 technology companies offering their shares to the public on the stock exchange, against 308 in the heady days of 1999, and 221 last year. But this is nothing more than a classic boom-bust cycle. Meeker said: "We are still in the early innings of the internet. We had a boomlet, we had a bust and now things are beginning to stabilise." The report goes on to remind investors that technology remains a highly lucrative sector to place your money in, if you pick the right company. Since 1980 1,705 technology companies have gone public, creating $1.6tr in public market wealth. But only five per cent of those companies have accounted for all the net wealth creation. Even the cohort of big companies has fallen: the number of "ten baggers" - companies whose valuations have risen more than 1,000 per cent - has fallen from 82 to just 65. Last year was the first since 1980 in which the value of public technology companies fell, rather than grew.