Someone still has to make the cornflakes.(Industry Trend or Event)(Column)

Shakespeare, JP Morgan and Philip Virgo cast a sceptical eye over the City's e-cstatic behaviour

In the City, the "E" word is king, and e-stocks are carrying the wealth of the stock market on their back. But are they strong enough to bear the weight?, asks Julia Vowler.

The latest FTSE index has seen prestigious names in traditional industries such as power generation and brewing ousted by impudent information-related upstarts, all of which share the magic TMT brand -- technology, media and telecoms (plus e-banking) -- which the City just loves these days.

The acute bifurcation of the stock market into TMT (buy) and non-TMT (dump) sectors is, according to some analysts, highlighting a stock market crash in the value of non-TMT stocks three times the size of the [pounds]50bn October 1987 crash.

It seems somewhat ironic, perhaps, for those in the IT profession to regard this as cautionary. At last, so they might be forgiven for thinking, IT -- with the added magic new "E" ingredient, of course -- is getting the recognition it deserves.

But, as Julius Caesar's wife warned her husband, intent on going to the Senate on the Ides of March, "thy wisdom is consumed in confidence".

The problem is that confidence is what the City is all about, producing what appears to outsiders in the real world to be an almost infantile herd-instinct of investment ...