Rising Tide at eBay

The conventional wisdom that investors should avoid e-commerce companies in favor of Internet media names hasn't panned out lately.

In fact, shares of eBay (EBAY Quote) and Amazon(AMZN Quote) each rose more than 17% in August. Though both stocks are down substantially for the year, last month they outperformed Google(GOOG Quote), which rose less than 1%, and Yahoo!(YHOO Quote), which gained 7%.

Another e-commerce stock, IAC/InterActiveCorp(IACI Quote), the parent of the HSN cable-shopping channel, jumped 13%. During that same period, the Nasdaq Composite index jumped 5.9%.

This may signal a change in fortune for these stocks, which still are out of favor with analysts, who caution against reading too much into these price moves. Indeed, eBay and Amazon are both down more than 30% this year, while IAC is little changed. ...