"Probably the last place you would expect to find stocks that derive some benefit from a weak economy is in the Internet sector. But when sifting through the limited number of positive second-quarter earnings reports, a surprising number of Web stocks with countercyclical attributes emerge. They aren’t all good buys — quite a few are looking pretty pricey after steep runups following their reports. But given that economic weakness will likely persist into 2002, these companies, which so far have been able to buck all the bad news, are worth keeping an eye on."
06/19/04 update: there was big money to be made with dotcoms in 2003, but this year most of the sector is overbought again.