Amazon.com the money-losing online book-seller whose market value now greatly exceeds that of Sears, may be the most outrageous example of Internet speculation. But it has plenty of company inside the bubble. Online auctioneer eBay, trading publicly only since September, is up tenfold and is now six times as big as venerable bricks-and-mortar auction house Sotheby's. Without question, Internet stocks are the hottest things since biotechnology shares soared in 1991 (and crashed in 1992), and may be the hottest things since the Dutch tulip-bulb craze in the 1600s.
But don't get me wrong. I agree with the cheerleaders that the Net...