Is it déjà vu all over again? Barely three years after the dot-com boom exploded, at least one report suggests the next exciting investment might be going back to the future - Internet stocks. Again.
Who got that idea? Well, Yahoo and Amazon stocks look like they've snapped out of it and have begun leaving the broader markets behind, according to E-Commerce Times, which reports the USA Today Internet 50 index up 6.2 percent for 2003 and the Standard and Poor's 500 index down 1.9 percent.
"There never seems to be a dull moment with these stocks," says Munder Capital Management fund manager Paul Cook to E-Commerce Times. "They're either rocking and rolling or getting the snot beat out of them." Just like the classic brick-and-mortar stocks, even.
Yahoo itself is up 49.1 percent at this writing with Amazon up 43.9 percent. Adult video and Internet content providers and broadcasters New Frontier Media reported up 1.27 percent at the close of March 31 trading on the high-tech NASDAQ stock composite. And while we're not talking huge money gains here - 27 out of the 30 Internet 50 stocks showing market gains are valued at around $500 million each, according to E-Commerce Times - this apparent Internet revival may be prodding a new debate or two.
Those would include questions as to whether dot-com stocks are getting loftier-than-realistic valuations, how much of the stocks' gains is actually due to small share prices to begin with, and whether many gains are in fact a byproduct of "short-term posturing," E-Commerce Times said. And one investment commentator seems to be hedging a bet, in one way.
"Longer term, the valuations could be a concern," Schaeffer's Investment Research vice president Todd Salamone told the online financial journal, "but we've seen these stocks go through the roof before." And some of the dot-coms - like DoubleClick.com - may have begun acting on the lessons learned from the first dot-com crash, Cook told the journal - unloading unprofitable businesses or sidelines, and putting more transactions and advertising into cyberspace.
