Henry Blodget

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Henry Blodget (born 1966) is a former securities analyst, first famous and later made infamous for his optimistic outlook of dot-com stocks during his tenure as senior Internet analyst for Merrill Lynch in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Like many other securities analysts working for investment banks during this time period, Blodget was not rigorously trained as an investor and was not a Chartered Financial Analyst. According to thestreet.com, Blodget began his career as a freelance journalist and, according to the Providence Journal, was a proofreader for Harper's Magazine.

Henry Blodget's predictions made him one of the most influential stock marketeers of the time. In December 1998, his unprecedented prediction that Amazon.com's stock price would hit $400 landed him a prized position at Merrill Lynch. In early 2000, days before the dot-com bubble burst, Blodget personally invested $700,000 in tech stocks, only to lose it most of it in the years that followed. By 2001, he accepted a buyout offer from Merrill Lynch and left the firm. By 2002, Eliot Spitzer had published Merrill Lynch e-mails which gave the public the graphic examples of an alleged fraud behind certain analysts' published stock recommendations. In 2003, he was charged with civil securities fraud by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He settled without admitting or denying the allegations and is banned from the securities industry for life.

Blodget is a frequent contributor to Slate Magazine, Newsweek International, New York Magazine, and other publications; at Slate, his writings about investing carry a seven-paragraph disclosure of potential conflicts of interest. [1]. Blodget's first book, "The Wall Street Self-Defense Manual: A Consumer's Guide to Intelligent Investing", will be published in 2007.