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Strategies & Market Trends : 50% Gains Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: AJ Berger who wrote (2566)	1/11/1999 11:43:00 PM
From: Mao II	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 118717

DB & Thread -- Compaq buying shopping.com; (also astute analyst suggests break in nuts "might bode poorly for the overall market" -- oh, really?): biz.yahoo.com Internet stocks soar even higher as Dow drops (New throughout, updates to close, pvs NEW YORK) By Dick Satran SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 11 (Reuters) - Almost everything Internet reached new heights in the stock market on Monday as enthusiastic small investors bid the best-known Web stocks to new peaks while the blue-chip issues favored by Wall Street pros lost ground. ''Instead of Internet mania dying down, it seems to be picking up,'' said Abishek Gami of William Blair. For most stocks it was a ho-hum session. The Dow Jones industrials dropped 23.43 to 9619.89. But Internet stocks were electrified, with Internet bellwether Yahoo Inc. up more than $100 at one point in the day, and all of the top 10 gainers on the tech-heavy Nasdaq index up at least $21. The widely followed American Stock Exchange Internet Index jumped 44.91 points to 765.04, gaining just over 6 percent, and the more narrowly based street.com Internet Index, soared nearly 18 percent, up 88.42 to 588.19. A scattering of stories gave investors new excuses to snap up more of the high-flying stocks which have been rising into thin air on not much news in recent months. Compaq Computer Corp. pumped up the bullish psychology by saying it would take over a well-known Web site, shopping.com, in a $220 million cash takeover. Internet broker ETrade Group Inc,, meanwhile, reported sharply higher revenue and a smaller-than-expected loss. And leading Internet ad firm DoubleClick told Reuters in an interview it was now handling 5 billion Web ads a month -- a strong gain over September's 3 billion. ETrade soared $20.875 to $88.50, and Compaq's takeover target, shopping.com. leaped $5.39 to $18.57. DoubleClick ended $20.66 higher at $79.54. Traders were placing bets that Yahoo would be the next to report good news in the form of solid quarterly earnings on Tuesday, and, perhaps more important, a split of its high-priced stock. Yahoo soared $70.875 to $414.50 after earlier rising as high as $445. With small investors dominating the Internet trading sector, stock splits loom large, said Gami. ''People need the stock splits so they can afford to buy them,'' he said. Another leading Internet stock, video streaming company Broadcast.com Inc., unveiled a two-for-one split and its shares soared $87.55 to close at $285.06, making it the top gainer in dollar terms on the Nasdaq. America Online Inc. paced the early advance, gaining $18.625 to close at an all-time high of $165.125 on the New York Stock Exchange. Merrill Lynch analyst Jonathan Cohen reiterated a buy rating on the stock and raised his price target on the shares to $195. Analysts continue to watch the Internet group, looking for indications that the rally could lose steam and give way to a reversal at least as furious. ''If these Internet stocks break, it might bode very poorly for the overall market,'' said Bill Meehan, chief market analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald in Darien, Conn. But Gami suggested that some of Wall Street's pros were looking in the wrong place for the much-anticipated downturn. ''Yahoo, AOL, Amazon -- these are good companies with good products and good management,'' Gami said. ''Don't focus on them waiting for them to blow up.'' But he conceded that the general upturn in Internet stocks had swept up virtually anything with ''Internet,'' including some companies with bad management and copy-cat business plans. Those stocks could be most vulnerable in a downturn, he said. The Internet sector also could be hit by a seasonal slowdown later in the year in both e-commerce and advertising, which usually peak in December, Gami said. ''That's a potential thing hanging out there that could hurt.'' Regards, M2