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Analysing current market trends on the basis of the past is a little like trying to predict a fund’s future performance based on its historical returns.

But despite the dangers, some commentators still see similarities between the developed world financial crisis of 2007-8 and the emerging market financial crises of 1997-8. They draw a parallel between the liquidity pumped into the system during the 1997-8 crisis, some of which fed the unsustainable boom in technology, with the recent spikes in natural resources and emerging markets.

As emerging market stocks dipped earlier this year along with their peers in the developed world, the focus has now shifted to commodities, more particularly oil, where analysts are forecasting an unprecedented real-term high of $200 a barrel. Most recently, Lehman Brothers weighed in on the issue with a report entitled "Oil Dot.com".

"Fundamental changes cannot explain sudden, severe price or curve movements," the report says. "As in the dot.com period, when 'new economy' stocks became popular, a growing number of Wall Street analysts have been repeatedly raising their forecasts as oil prices have risen. These revised forecasts have been partially responsible for new investor flows, driving prompt and forward prices to perhaps unsustainable levels."

The risks of a high oil price are not just economic. Lawmakers may also use it to justify intervention in the commodity markets. Just as telecoms saw greater regulation after 2000, the argument goes, so speculators may find themselves out of the oil market. Even George Soros, who helped the pound collapse in the early 1990s, has found himself telling Congress to keep oil at a more sustainable price.

But a crash of dot.com proportions will need more than just oil to feed it, and the case for an overvaluation of other commodities is much harder to make. Gold is still way off its peak in real terms. Soft and hard commodities are moving in a number of different directions depending on the vagaries of supply and demand.

But as Frances Hudson, global thematic strategist at Standard Life Investments, points out, the potential for instability grows if a greater number of passive investors enter the market. Speculators who suddenly enter the market can exit it just as quickly. If they buy an even larger number of diversified all-commodity baskets and then leave them in large droves, a substantial market dip could well occur.

This might lead investors to question the price of natural resource companies, many of whom are thriving off the high price of their commodities. Evy Hambro, managing director at BlackRock and co-manager of the BlackRock World Mining Trust, says analysts already predict sharp dips in the price copper, for instance, although he says he does not share their views. But he notes analysts have already priced this information into the stocks, making them good value if you do not share the analysts’ low forecasts.

On the larger end of the scale, one future risk of natural resource stocks may be consolidation. Commentators are already comparing the mooted merger between mining majors BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, which would be the second-largest in UK history, with the largest in UK history, Vodafone’s purchase of Mannesmann right at the end of the technology boom. Some of the technology mega-deals at the beginning of the decade also required exhausting de-leveraging or proved nightmarish to integrate – AOL Time Warner, for example.

But even if such deals require leverage, Mr Hambro points out mining stocks are currently underleveraged, with debt at extremely low levels of one times Ebitda. He observes mergers do not create new capacity and should give giant players even greater power to raise prices.

Consensus is more widespread, however, over the parallels between natural resource companies with development licenses but little production and technology firms with intellectual property rights but no mature business model. London’s Aim lists a not insubstantial number of natural resource companies of this type, just as New York’s Nasdaq provided a world centre for technology companies.

But at this stage, investors are not prepared to pile en masse into natural resource micro-caps in the way they bought into technology start-ups. The recent flight to quality has already reduced Aim’s attractions. Mr Hambro for one says he only invests in companies that are producing or close to production. Although investors may simply be making different mistakes to the ones they made during the technology boom, they are not yet repeating all their previous errors in commodities. And if they continue to remember the past as prices smash records, there is a chance they may not have to repeat it.