It really is a motley bunch. I speak of companies like PurchasePro.com, Spectrasite Holdings, Geoworks, Metawave Communications, Digex, RadView Software, Com21, NaviSite, Novatel Wireless, and Internet Capital Group. All are former Nasdaq superstars of the digital era, and not a single one of those stocks traded for more than 17 cents a share as of last Friday. And they've got plenty of company. So what are we to do with them?

If Nasdaq were following its rulebook, it would be putting these companies--and some 500 more--through the delisting process. It's right there in the listing requirements: the minimum bid price for continued listing on Nasdaq is $1 a share. If a stock falls below it for an extended period of time, that's it, you're done, the party's over.

If there's one thing we've learned over the past decade, however, it's that rules--especially in the stock market--don't really count. The Los Angeles Times reported on Friday that Nasdaq chairman Hardwick Simmons told an industry conference that the idea of changing the $1 rule is being considered. I'll consider it too.

My short answer: of course they should relax that particular rule, but they should stick to the rest. Why? It's simple. Stock prices are arbitrary. I'm not speaking of the concept behind Burton Malkiel's seminal work, A Random Walk Down Wall Street. I'm speaking of the fact that a stock price in and of itself says nothing. Market capitalization--now that's real information. But tell me a stock is trading for $5 or $20, and that's meaningless data.

Consider Ericsson. While I wouldn't necessarily want to be an owner of that stock today, the fact that its U.S. ADRs were trading for 44 cents a share last week--four cents less than those of Fashionmall.com--doesn't really say much. Ericsson happens to have $18 billion in annual revenues and a market capitalization of $3.5 billion. Fashionmall? Just $600,000 in revenues and a market cap of $4 million.

If a company can't maintain the more relevant metrics--on the Nasdaq Small Cap market, that's $2.5 million in shareholder equity, a $35 million market cap, or $500,000 in net income--by all means show them the door. Fashionmall.com, for example, still makes the grade, because it's sitting on $25 million in cash some punch-drunk investors handed over during the boom, and shareholders equity--despite an accumulated deficit of $16.7 million--still sits at $33 million. But there are many others that should soon be joining the near-200 companies that have been delisted in 2002.

I do think that Nasdaq should insist on reverse splits for those companies that can't get their shares above $1 a share. For whatever reason, such low stock prices do seem to attract the wrong kind of people--the kind that like to manipulate things. It would also put everybody in a better mood if we didn't have to see such pathetically low stock prices crossing the ticker every day.

Yes, too many companies went public during the boom. And yes, it's time to clean up the mess we left, particularly on Nasdaq. But let's be sensible about it, shall we? That would be a welcome change.