Looking back at 1999, you can only marvel at the explosion of investor interest in Internet stocks and IPOs.

The market supported an astonishing number of Internet plays, showing signs of strain only in the summer, when glut of new Net tickers flooded the street in the weeks after a strong spring correction. Which is not surprising, if you believe (as I do) that the economic potential of the Internet is currently being undervalued in the market ...There were 258 Internet IPOs last year. Of those, 86, or exactly one-third, finished their first day of trading with gains of at least 100 percent over their respective offer prices. In contrast, only 28 companies (11 percent) ended their debut sessions below their respective offer prices. With that kind of record, and with billions of dollars in venture funding priming the IPO pipeline with aspiring Internet stars, 2000 promises to be just as frenetic. The year finished the way it began - consistently strong. The average first-day return for December Internet IPOs was 108 percent, only slightly off the average debut in October (112 percent) and November (118 percent). The two biggest gainers of the year - FreeMarkets and Cobalt Networks - came in Q4, while a look at the list of Top 10 first-day performers turns up a number of e-commerce and infrastructure companies, investor favorites in 1999.