Lycos Stands Out in Down Market

Shares of portal Lycos Inc. were surging more than 15 percent in midday trading Monday amid continuing speculation the company may be a buyout target.

At 11:30 a.m. Eastern, internet.com’s Internet Stock Index was off 19.26, or 2.84 percent, to 659.57, the Nasdaq Composite had lost 75.00 to 3,454.06 and the Dow Jones industrial average had gained 11.99 to 10,621.36.

Lycos Inc. had jumped 5-5/8 to 59-3/4. Reports first surfaced Friday that Terra Networks SA may buy the portal for up to $10 billion in stock. Terra confirmed it was talking with Lycos about a possible alliance, but did not elaborate. Lycos has never confirmed the talks.

Wit Capital was up 5/8 to 10-7/8 and E*Trade Group Inc. was off 3/8 to 19-7/16. Wit Monday purchased E*Trade’s E-Offering unit, which offers initial public offerings to individual investors. E*Trade investors will receive a 25 percent stake in Wit. E*Trade is also expected to acquire Wit Soundview’s retail brokerage operation which has about 100,000 accounts.

Net Objects had jumped 1-11/16 to 12-3/8 after sealing a deal with IBM Corp. . IBM will feature Net Objects’ Fusion Web design software on its business PCs.

Juno Online Services was up 1/4 to 8-3/8. The company Monday said it had reached 10 million subscribers. The total includes both its free e-mail users as well as customers who pay for premium Internet access offerings.

Meanwhile, it was turning out to be a down day for many leaders. Some of the biggest losers included Broadcom Corp. (BRCM), off 3 to 146-7/16, Checkpoint Software Technologies , losing 3 to 160-1/2, eBay Inc. was off 4-3/8 to 116-15/16 and Exodus Communications was down 2-7/16 to 75-5/8.

Also falling were Infospace.com Inc. , off 2-22/32 to 49-1/2, Juniper Networks Inc. , losing 8-1/16 to 155-5/16 and RealNetworks Inc. had lost 2-1/2 to 33-3/4.

Sign up for Internet StockTracker, a weekly e-mail newsletter from
internet.com Corp. Every Friday internet.com will deliver to your e-mail
in-box the latest performance data on individual Internet companies and
their competitors. Internet StockTracker will deliver to you all the
statistics you need to assess the week’s activity.
Subscribe today at