Has the E-Stock Bubble Burst?

NEW YORK: Net-stock mania is cooling off -- a little. After gaining 8 percent in the new year alone, the tech-heavy NASDAQ took a tumble Tuesday, shedding 63 points by afternoon. If you bought Yahoo, which at one point Monday was up $90 a share, Tuesday may well have looked like a Wall Street apocalypse. TIME Wall Street columnist Daniel Kadlec says this isn't the bubble bursting -- the tech-stock mania is a lot tougher than that -- but it could finally be the beginning of a move toward sanity.

"There's a realization that a lot of insiders at these Internet companies have begun selling their stock," he says. Combine that with the anticipation of a lot of new Internet-stock issues due in the next few months, and traders see that supply-and-demand curve sagging by spring. Those insiders, meanwhile, don't know anything we don't -- they just want to see some real money. "They know how inflated the current prices are, and that all that paper wealth could disappear at any time," says Kadlec. "They have faith in their companies -- they're just not idiots." Maybe the traders aren't either.