By David Schepp BBC News Online's North America Business Reporter

Are dot.coms back in fashion? Or are investors once bitten, twice shy? More than two years after the tech crash, a bevy of tech firms - including a dot.com - are trying to sell themselves to Wall Street investors.

The recent dot.com flameout has taught US investors and neophyte internet firms a lasting lesson about floating stock before it is time.

The soaring technology share prices that dominated the late '90s soon tumbled leaving investors disgruntled and corporate execs scrambling for more funding - or worse, filing for bankruptcy.

What we saw last week was part of this very, very slow process of returning to a healthy level of IPO investing

Kyle Huske IPO analyst

With billions of dollars of investor wealth having been wiped out, it is no wonder these days there is little appetite for initial public offerings (IPOs) among tech stocks.

That is why the debut of five tech stocks last week was greeted with some interest by those who closely eye the IPO market.

"We're just starting to open up the door, but it will take a while," says David Menlow, an analyst with IPOfinancial.com.

Guarded investors

Contrary to what the market is used to, one business sector is not dominating the IPO marketplace, Mr Menlow says.

Nevertheless, of the six stocks floated last week, five were tech stocks, traded on the Nasdaq Stock Market, the bellwether marketplace for tech stocks in the US.

Recent IPOs

Eon Labs - $147m SRA Int'l - $90m Netflix - $82.5m Altiris - $50m Overstock.com - $39m

"What we saw last week was part of this very, very slow process of returning to a healthy level of IPO investing," says Kyle Huske, market analyst at IPO.com.

"We probably won't reach that until maybe next year," she says. "But we're constantly improving by small incremental measures."

Interest for new stocks among investors has been sabotaged by the ever-changing fortunes of the Nasdaq Composite Index, a wide measure of technology stocks, and large, blue-chip stocks, which comprise the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA).

Investors are too worried about the fate of their current portfolios to bother themselves with new offerings, she says.

Small potatoes

In order to gauge the current level of IPO activity, it helps to look at the levels seen at the height of the dot.com frenzy.

In 1999, an average of 11 firms made their stocks available to investors in any given week, for a total of 526 for the year.

This year things have been quite a bit slower, although improved over last year, when just 32 stocks went public during the first five months of 2001.

So far this year, just 38 stocks have floated their shares, and tech stocks have been in the minority, comprising just 21%, or 8, of them.

And in comparison to other deals, last week's tech-stocks floated last week were small potatoes.

In fact none matched the amount of money raised by pharmaceutical-firm Eon Labs, the lone non-tech-stock flotation, which raised $147m (�101m) - still small by historical standards.

By contrast, a float earlier this year by eye-care-products company Alcon raised $2.3bn.

The focus on non-tech stocks has also meant that more stocks have floated on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) than the Nasdaq, traditionally the market where new tech start-ups debut.

Pondering risk

Negative investor psychology has played a huge part in the waning interest for IPOs over the last two years.

"Each individual deal is being scrutinised on a level we have not seen in many, many years," says IPOfinancial.com's Menlow. "It is a market steeped in reality not in perception."

Amid the dot.com heydays, a company did not have to give much thought to going public. Financing was readily available, and investors were zealous about finding the next big thing.

These days, however, as investors still ponder the effects of a tech-stock meltdown, they are keen on finding safer investments.

"In this environment, certainly investors aren't throwing money away," says IPO.com's Huske.