DECADES ago, the world's wealthiest men were those who controlled land, steel or oil. With the advent of the Internet and the "digital revolution," however, creating wealth is no longer a function of the traditional factors of production, and markets are starting to waive traditional indicators in valuing a company.

It is supposed to be the new wave in the world equities market and the frenzy is slowly creeping into the local stock exchange. In the United States and elsewhere in the world, a dichotomy is fast emerging as investors start to distinguish between issues that have something to do with the so-called new economy and those that do not.

Upstart Internet companies that have yet to yield a track record of profitability are getting more interest than customarily favored blue-chip companies that manufacture products with higher value added. At the Philippine Stock Exchange, even dormant companies seen with or without tangible basis as shifting to the information-technology business automatically become hot picks.

Call it fascination with the "unquantifiable." Nobody can tell for sure whether this is a mere infatuation or a paradigm shift towards the "dot-com phenomenon," but more and more fanatics are willing to take a gamble.

"Tech stocks" loosely refer to issues with businesses that have something to do with the Internet. These include computer makers, software developers, telecom companies, Internet service providers, website designers and business solutions providers.

In the Philippines, however, the market no longer considers index heavyweights like Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. and Benpres Holdings Corp. as tech stocks although their businesses are related to the Internet. Nowadays, the label belongs to companies that have shifted to Internet-related commerce like Philweb.Com Inc., Ajo.net Holdings and Vantage Equities Inc. All three were inactive listed firms that recently became the darlings of the market when they reinvented themselves as "dot-com" companies.

Electronics and semiconductor firms Ionics Circuits Inc., Music Corp., Psi Technologies Inc. and Solid Group Inc. are also regarded as tech stocks. Then there are "tech stock wannabes" like Island Mining and Industrial Corp. and Imperial Resources Corp., which have also disclosed plans to shift from mining and oil exploration to e-commerce.

When foreign investors started dumping Philippine stocks last year over an insider trading scandal involving gambling firm BW Resources Corp., local tech stocks provided some form of relief. Philweb, Island Mining and Imperial Resources gave investors sizable returns at a time when even blue-chip companies like PLDT and San Miguel Corp. were faltering.

Believers refuse to call the sudden popularity of tech stocks in the country a mere hype. They call it a new ballgame that they believe is here to stay.

"It's going to change the way we conduct business, how we run our lives, they way we keep in touch with each other because in the end, the new currency is really information. Forget gold, forget dollar, forget diamond. Information is actually more valuable," Diversified Financial News Network president Raymond Garcia said.

"The Intel Pentium chip is more valuable per weight than gold. It's more expensive than diamond and what does that mean? It's not so much the raw materials that went with it. It's the intellectual property. Basically, you're putting more weight on intellectual skills and the Philippines has a great pool of that and so this could be our chance to leap-frog like the other economies," Garcia said.

The 32-year-old Garcia is one of the high priests of the digital age. He already has carved out a niche in the local e-commerce scene through DFNN.com, a company that makes online trading in the Philippines possible. DFNN.com is set to become the first tech stock in the country to go on an initial public offering,

Some emerging tech issues made it to the stock market the easy way: through the back door. Philweb, for instance, was a dormant mining firm before businessman Roberto Ongpin's group came in and repackaged it as an Internet company. The new image has propped up Philweb's stock price to 50 centavos from only 8.25 centavos in just three months.

Philweb aims to create an infrastructure for the Internet value chain of the future. The company focuses on e-commerce and is working on providing high-speed Internet access. It is holding talks with venture capitalists and other Internet companies in the region to break into the Internet cable TV business.

While Philweb went public through a backdoor listing, others moved to the tech sector simply by reinventing themselves as tech stocks.

Former PSE chair Wilson Sy transformed his holding firm, Vantage Equities Inc., into an Internet firm. Vantage recently bought stakes in several online companies and secured private placements from new strategic investors.

Oil exploration firm Acoje Holdings Inc. renamed itself Ajo.net Holdings and started investing in offshore information technology firms while Wellex Industries Inc. of "plastics king" William Gatchalian has announced plans to spin off its plastics manufacturing business into iCorp Cybernetics.

Also keen on taking advantage of the Internet fever is Omico Corp., a company that until recently owed its stellar performance to the fact that it was formed by former classmates of President Estrada.

Every business conglomerate now wants to have a piece of the Internet and every dormant company in the exchange is seen as a potential vehicle to get online and in the stock market the quick and painless way. This may be why the favorite game in the market is second-guessing which inactive company will soon have a dot-com at the end of its name.

Even non-tech companies are riding on the Internet bandwagon. While sticking to their core businesses, they want to make sure that they also get a piece of the pudding.

Businessman Ramon Ang, right-hand man of San Miguel Corp. boss man Eduardo Cojuangco Jr., has placed his money in Centennial City along Roxas Boulevard and has renamed the site "CyberBay." Megaworld Corp.'s Andrew Tan is developing the country's first information technology park, the Eastwood City CyberPark and has been going around promoting his flagship company as "meg@world."

PDCP Bank, banking arm of Metro Pacific Corp., plans to rename itself "E-business Bank," capitalizing on its affiliation with two of the country's telecommunications giants, PLDT and mobile phone firm Smart Communications Inc.

Even memorial park builder Pryce Corp. has changed its name to Philgardens.com Inc. in line with the company's strategy to sell memorial plans through the Internet.

The people behind tech stocks believe that profit opportunities in the Internet are infinite. In cyberspace, it is possible for companies to sell digitized products like MP3 audio files or do retailing without a single store.

Tech stocks are also seen as resilient and largely unaffected by macroeconomic fundamentals like recession and tightening interest rates because of the huge funds they are getting from venture capitalists and stock investors.

"The economy of Japan is in really bad shape but its stocks index is growing because of the tech stocks and participation of IT companies," DFNN.com's Garcia said.

Believer in tech stocks insist that despite studies showing that three out of four firms aren't making money, the field remains largely unexplored and unexploited.