Wary Internet investors, in fact, may be prosecutors' and regulators' secret weapon.

Yahoo is for "conservative Internet investors," he said, because it leads its segment, like Amazon in electronic commerce.

Events yesterday provided further proof that Internet investors prefer fantasy to reality.

For smaller brokers - there are three score of them competing for Internet investors now - the dependence on trading commissions is far greater.

The resulting hybrid companies will flush Internet investors from their enchanted kingdom into an alien world where real earnings count.

So far, Internet investors have not reacted negatively to the storm's aftermath.

But like Microsoft, Internet investors and list makers will soon realize that they need not limit themselves to the classified ads already appearing in print.

And Internet investors account for only an infinitesimally small fraction of one percent of all investment in new stock offerings.

But others say that Internet investors have learned to draw distinctions that many failed to make during the dot-com craze.

In the view of many Internet investors, stocks move up because, well - who cares why they move up?