Internet issues stay afloat, despite a mid-day sell-off.

A positive shopping report from this morning’s Wall Street Journal helped
Internet issues stay afloat, despite a mid-day sell-off. Strong shopping
numbers from portal leader, Yahoo! added to the optimism and sent its shares
higher.

internet.com’s Internet Stock Index lost 4.49, or 0.52 percent, to 852.68,
the Nasdaq Composite jumped 5.94 to 3975.38 and the Dow Jones industrial
average gave up 14.68 to 11391.08.

Business-to-business (B2B) e-Commerce stocks remained the hot sector for
Internet investors.
Commerce One (CMRC)
surged 57-1/8 higher to 256-7/16. Shares moved up over 175 points last week
in anticipation of the stock’s 3-for-1 split. Post-split, shares show no
signs of slowing down as investors rally behind the B2B procurement software
provider.

Customer service software company, Silknet Software (SILK)
rose 23-1/2, or 17 percent, to 161-1/2 and shares of Ariba (ARBA)
climbed 20-3/4 to 182-3/4.

Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO)
rocketed 12-3/8 higher to 415 after announcing strong etailing numbers. The
portal announced that orders on its shopping site in the 30 days including
Christmas Day were almost five times the level recorded in the 1998 holiday
shopping season.

Priceline.com (PCLN)
lost 5/8 to 54-3/8, following a report from the Wall Street Journal that
PCLN is prepared to launch a new Web site named Perfect YardSale. The
YardSale site will allow users to auction off and bid on “quality
second-hand goods” and will compete directly with the Internet auctions run
by eBay Inc. (EBAY)
, Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN)
and Yahoo!. Shares of EBAY lost 8-5/16 to 134 and AMZN dropped 8-7/8,
closing to 81-1/8.

eToys Inc. (ETYS)
continued slumping, losing 5 to 25-15/16. Robertson Stephens downgraded the
toy etailer from a “buy” to a “LT attractive” rating.

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