June 6, 1999. Founded in 1997, priceline.com launched its service in April 1998 and sold more than 10,000 airline tickets in six weeks. Founder Jay Walker owns about 44% of the company.

Priceline.com puts a new twist on e-commerce schemes by letting consumers name their own prices for a variety of products and services.

The company sells airline tickets, hotel rooms, home mortgages, and new cars through its Web site. Buyers choose the price they want to pay, but are not given choices such as departure times or brand names.

Priceline.com offers a patented reverse auction system. They communicate bids to companies willing to sell excess inventory at below retail prices.

The 52 week high for the year was $165 and the low was $58. It closed June 3 at $84 1/8. In my estimation priceline.com will be one of the major movers in the Internet movement. Just to give you an idea of the amount of phone calls they receive, after the airlines announced that they will be raising their fares, priceline.com received 20,000 requests for lower prices in two days. That is strong!

Internet stocks have been taking a beating in the last several weeks and now people are getting a little worried that it will crash in a few months. I do not recommend any Internet stocks at this moment, but by the end of the summer I predict that some will come back very strong including priceline.com.

Internet stocks could drop another 15% to 20% before traders take a big look at them again for an even bigger run then before. Pundits recommend priceline.com a strong buy as of this writing, but I say hold off until the end of summer and you'll be getting a bigger bang for your buck. Ticker symbol: PCLN.

George