"It's very difficult to switch gears in mid-air." It's always easier to see things in retrospect. Amazon had hit its peak by last year's millennium celebrations. eToys hit its peak in October 1999, and Priceline maxed out the April before. Somehow, eBay managed to hang on until March of 2000, when the Nasdaq composite index started its stunning crash back to earth. Then came June 22, when Lehman convertible bond analyst Ravi Suria released a "scathing" and widely disseminated report concluding that Amazon was burning through cash too fast and would run out of money by early 2001. An annoyed Amazon chief Jeff Bezos called the report "hogwash" on TV and the stock took a 20 percent hit in one day, personally costing Bezos nearly $1 billion.