Henry Blodget

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Henry Blodget (born 1966) is a former securities analyst who was senior Internet analyst for Merrill Lynch during the dot-com bubble.

Blodget received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University and began his career as a freelance journalist and was a proofreader for Harper's Magazine.^[1] In 1994, Blodget joined the corporate finance training program at Prudential Securities, and, two years later, moved to Oppenheimer & Co. in equity research. In December 1998, he predicted that Amazon.com's stock price would hit $400 (which it did a month later, gaining 128%). This call received significant media attention, and, two months later, he accepted a prized position at Merrill Lynch.^[2]^[3] Blodget's influence continued to increase, and, in 2000, he was voted the No. 1 Internet/eCommerce analyst on Wall Street by Institutional Investor, Greenwich Associates, and thestreet.com. In early 2000, days before the dot-com bubble burst, Blodget personally invested $700,000 in tech stocks, only to lose most of it in the years that followed.^[4] In 2001, he accepted a buyout offer from Merrill Lynch and left the firm.

1 Fraud allegations
2 Writing
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Fraud allegations

In 2002, Eliot Spitzer published Merrill Lynch emails in which Blodget allegedly gave different assessments about stocks internally than he was publishing publicly.^[5] 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 was subsequently banned from the securities industry for life.

[edit] Writing

Currently Blodget is president of Cherry Hill Research, an industry analysis and consulting firm, and edits Internet Outsider, a blog about internet business trends and research. He is also a frequent contributor to the magazines Slate, Newsweek and New York.

Blodget began writing for online magazine Slate in January, 2004, initially covering the Martha Stewart trials. This series was well received and led to a continued relationship between Blodget and Slate. In July 2004, Blodget began writing a 4 part series entitled "The Wall Street Self-Defense Manual" for the magazine. Ironically, he examined the role of analysts, noting: "Predicting future market performance is not an exact science, and those who pretend it is do so at their peril." This series expanded to a total of 13 articles, an index of which can be found here: http://www.slate.com/id/2105036/

Blodget's later articles for the magazine focused on the return limiting actions of individual investors, including listening to analysts and the financial media, and relying on active management such as mutual and hedge funds. Instead, Blodget recommends low fee index investing to capture the broad return, while focusing on reduced portfolio turnover to minimize taxes. This investment strategy is in contrast to his earlier life as an analyst. His Slate articles about investing carry a seven-paragraph disclosure of potential conflicts of interest.^[4]

Blodget's first book, The Wall Street Self-Defense Manual: A Consumer's Guide to Intelligent Investing, was published in January 2007.