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Strategies & Market Trends : Angels of Alchemy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Smart_Money who wrote (9727)	8/24/2000 12:47:33 PM
From: ColtonGang	Respond to of 24256

Merrill's Blodget: Web Sentiment is Improving AMAZON.COM AMZN 39.56 0.75 1.93% AMERICA ONLINE AOL 59.81 1.06 1.80% DOUBLECLICK INC DCLK 37.88 0.00 0.00% YAHOO INC YHOO 134.19 0.38 0.28% EBAY INC EBAY 59.44 1.63 2.82% HOMESTORE.COM INC HOMS 46.38 5.31 12.93% DJIA 11166.26 21.61 Nasdaq 4033.81 22.80 Rus. 2000 521.24 3.36 8/24/2000 12:46PM ET Investor sentiment toward consumer-oriented Internet stocks is improving, Merrill Lynch analyst Henry Blodget said Thursday. In a research note, Blodget said the consumer Internet sector is poised to perform well for the rest of the year. One sign that sentiment has improved is that certain negative news items have not affected consumer Web stocks as severely as in the past. For instance, in late July, Amazon.com reported second-quarter revenue that missed analysts' expectations. Last week, one of Amazon's partners, Living.com Inc., filed for bankruptcy protection and laid off 275 employees. Despite the bad news, Amazon shares are now slightly higher than the day before Amazon reported second-quarter results, he said. On the other hand, Blodget said "minor" good news has lifted Internet stocks. DoubleClick shares, for example, rose 17% Wednesday after the company announced it added three new Web sites to its network of outsourced online advertising services. Blodget predicted that consumer-oriented Internet companies will have solid, but not spectacular, fundamentals in the third quarter. Revenue growth rates are still slowing down as these companies get bigger, and the online advertising sector is still being hurt by the shakeout among Web firms. In the fourth quarter, however, fundamentals should improve, Blodget said. Combined with improving investor sentiment, the stronger fundamentals should help move Web stocks higher. Among consumer-oriented Web stocks, Blodget likes America Online, Yahoo!, Amazon, DoubleClick, EBay and Homestore.com Inc.