The hottest comments coming from President Clinton the other day had
nothing to do with Zippergate and everything to do with his support of not
taxing commerce on the Internet.
Despite a slew of state governors looking to slice and dice Internet
commerce for themselves via another state-backed grab for taxpayer dollars,
Clinton said that taxing this emerging commerce medium may do more harm
than good.
Wall Street applauded the remarks, sending shares in most Internet
stocks–commerce ones in particular–to new highs including Yahoo!, Amazon,
and AOL. CMG, which invests in more than a dozen Internet firms including
Lycos and GeoCities, rode high on a favorable piece in The Wall Street
Journal.
Profit taking followed as ISDEX, Internet Stock Index, hit its all-time
high and backed off slightly the week of February 24 through March 3,
ending with a 3% gain. ISDEX is up 35% year-to-date but basically ended
1997 flat so there was pent-up room for it to run.
With one of the world’s largest Internet trade shows next week,
Mecklermedia’s Spring Internet World in Los Angeles, expected to draw more
than 50,000 people to see the latest, greatest Net stuff, we expect more
investor awareness of the fast-growing and changing Internet industry.
Always something new, so watch for announcements and we’ll give you our
head’s up from the event.
The tally of hot and not Internet stocks:
ISDEX Feb 24 – Mar 3
ISDEX ® | Ticker | 03-Mar-98 | % change | Point change | % change |
Internet Stock Index | symbol | close | from | from | from |
24-Feb-98 | 24-Feb-98 | 31-Dec-97 | |||
ISDEX Geometric Average | 134.36 | 3.3% | 4.24 | 34.5% | |
ISDEX Price Wtd. Composite | 1,036.16 | 8.8% | 84.08 | 29.0% | |
NASDAQ | 1,757.14 | 3.2% | 53.71 | 11.9% | |
DJIA | 8,584.83 | 2.2% | 186.33 | 8.6% | |
CMG Info | CMGI | $ 54.13 | 30% | $12.50 | 79% |
Excite | XCIT | $ 47.75 | 21% | $8.13 | 59% |
Yahoo! | YHOO | $ 72.94 | 19% | $11.41 | 5% |
Lycos | LCOS | $ 40.50 | 15% | $5.22 | -2% |
Sportsline USA | SPLN | $ 26.00 | 14% | $3.25 | 142% |
Open Market | OMKT | $ 18.13 | 14% | $2.25 | 88% |
Mindspring | MSPG | $ 54.50 | 14% | $6.50 | 62% |
Infoseek | SEEK | $ 16.63 | 13% | $1.88 | 55% |
Amazon.Com | AMZN | $ 71.75 | 11% | $6.88 | 19% |
Onsale | ONSL | $ 26.75 | 7% | $1.69 | 49% |
VocalTec | VOCLF | $ 22.25 | 6% | $1.25 | 9% |
N2K | NTKI | $ 25.38 | 6% | $1.38 | 74% |
RealNetworks | RNWK | $ 15.75 | 5% | $0.81 | 14% |
Forefront | FFGI | $ 10.38 | 4% | $0.44 | 33% |
Security First Net Bank | SFNB | $ 11.00 | 4% | $0.44 | 52% |
CKS Group | CKSG | $ 18.44 | 2% | $0.44 | 31% |
E*TRADE | EGRP | $ 26.19 | 2% | $0.50 | 14% |
Concentric | CNCX | $ 14.13 | 2% | $0.25 | 59% |
Open Text | OTEXF | $ 16.63 | 2% | $0.25 | 24% |
CyberCash | CYCH | $ 12.50 | 1% | $0.13 | -1% |
PSINet | PSIX | $ 7.63 | 1% | $0.06 | 49% |
Network Solutions | NSOL | $ 19.88 | 0% | $0.00 | 51% |
Spyglass | SPYG | $ 8.41 | 0% | $0.00 | 70% |
Trusted Information Systems | TISX | $ 20.13 | 0% | $0.00 | 101% |
USWeb | USWB | $ 18.00 | 0% | $0.00 | 92% |
Security Dynamics | SDTI | $ 33.63 | -1% | -$0.19 | -6% |
America Online | AOL | $ 117.13 | -2% | -$1.94 | 29% |
Earthlink Network | ELNK | $ 50.50 | -2% | -$1.00 | 96% |
Netscape | NSCP | $ 19.56 | -2% | -$0.44 | -20% |
Versant Object Technologies | VSNT | $ 7.63 | -4% | -$0.31 | -45% |
CheckPoint Software | CHKPF | $ 39.88 | -4% | -$1.88 | -2% |
Mecklermedia | MECK | $ 26.63 | -6% | -$1.75 | 7% |
@Home Network | ATHM | $ 32.50 | -10% | -$3.81 | 29% |
CNET | CNWK | $ 33.00 | -13% | -$4.88 | 12% |
TOTAL | 1,036.16 | 5% | 49.44 | 29% | |
SIMPLE AVERAGE | 30.48 | 5% | 1.45 | 29.0% |
Mar 3: Open Market (NASDAQ:OMKT) receives three patents from the U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office that covers fundamental technology for
conducting business over the Internet. Open Market, which makes commerce
server software, was one of the first to focus on this area in 1993, long
before “Internet commerce” was even being discussed on a widespread basis.
Feb 27: CMG Info (NASDAQ:CMGI) gets a favorable mention in The Wall
Street Journal sending its shares up nearly 11% to $47.875 per share.
More than 18 months ago we said CMG represented a way for investors to play
a basket of Internet investments in one go since CMG owns pieces of Lycos
(NASDAQ:LCOS) and more than a dozen private Web startups including
GeoCities.
Feb 26: Egghead.com (NASDAQ:EGGS) signs up to sell software via Yahoo!
(NASDAQ:YHOO) as the formerly earth-based software retailer looks for
footing in the freefloating ether-space called the Web. Terms undisclosed,
although we estimate the deal at $10 million based on comparables.
Feb 25: AOL (NYSE:AOL) reports that its European membership is at 1 million
members. The joint venture with one of the world’s largest media companies,
Bertelsmann AG, began in Germany in November 1995. Total non-U.S. members
are at 1.2 million, according to AOL. Globally, AOL reports 11 million
members and 2 million for its CompuServe service.
Feb 25: Sportsline USA (NASDAQ:SPLN) CBS.Sportsline.com Web site ranked
third in Relevant Knowledge’s survey of unique visitors of Olympic coverage
Web sites. First was ESPN.Sportszone.com with 1.9 million users, and second
was the official Nagano site, nagano.olympic.org run by IBM. Sportsline user
count was 1.3 million according to the survey, the leader in percent gains
with 245% jump from pre-Olympic users.
