One certain feature of the markets this year will be an end to dot.com mania. Most analysts have lost faith in the majority of dot.coms although some still believe Amazon.com, which handled about one in 10 consumer sales on the Web this past holiday season, has a reasonable chance of prospering.

Mr Patrick Byrne, chief executive of Overstock.com, is predicting that Amazon will be dead in its present form - bankrupt, acquired, merged or somehow totally transformed - by June. Overstock.com is a privately held operation that feeds in part off the demise of online stores like Jewelry.com, eHats.com and BabyStripes.com, buying their inventory when the website is turned off.

He works on the premise that just about everyone that operates solely on the Net will go out of business, probably sooner rather than later.

At this time last year, Amazon.com was worth about twice the combined value of Sears Roebuck and Kmart, two of the most successful retailers of the 20th century. Priceline.com, which auctioned off discounted airline tickets, was worth more at its peak than every US airline put together. Being first in a particular market isn't enough to make an e-commerce site viable. Now the stock market valuations that made the new-economy entrepreneurs briefly worth billions are gone. Only two online retailers trade in double digits: eBay, with an auction mechanism that has no real-world equivalent; and Amazon.com, which is sinking fast. After a weaker-than-expected holiday season, more bankruptcies and closures are expected this month.