Henry Blodget

For those of a similar name, see Henry Blodgett (disambiguation).

Henry Blodget (born 1966) is an American former equity research analyst, currently banned from the securities industry, who was senior Internet analyst for CIBC Oppenheimer during the dot-com bubble and the head of the global Internet research team at Merrill Lynch. Blodget is now the editor and CEO of The Business Insider, a business news and analysis site, and a host of Yahoo Daily Ticker, a finance show on Yahoo.

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. In 1994, Blodget joined the corporate finance training program at Prudential Securities, and, two years later, moved to Oppenheimer & Co. in equity research. In October 1998, he predicted that Amazon.com's stock price would hit a pre-split price of $400 (which it did a month later, gaining 128%).

This call received significant media attention, and, two months later, he accepted a position at Merrill Lynch. 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. In 2001, he accepted a buyout offer from Merrill Lynch and left the firm.

Fraud allegation and settlement

In 2002, then New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, published Merrill Lynch e-mails in which Blodget gave assessments about stocks which conflicted with what was publicly published. In 2003, he was charged with civil securities fraud by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He agreed to a permanent ban from the securities industry and paid a $2 million fine plus a $2 million disgorgement.

Writing

As of 2011 he is co-founder, CEO/Editor-in-Chief of The Business Insider, a blog about Internet business trends and research. He is a frequent contributor to the magazines Slate, Newsweek and New York. He began writing for Slate in January 2004, initially covering the Martha Stewart trials. In July 2004, Blodget began writing a four-part series entitled "The Wall Street Self-Defense Manual" for the magazine. 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.

Blodget's later articles for the magazine have 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. Blodget now recommends low fee index investing to capture the broad return, while focusing on reduced portfolio turnover to minimize taxes. His Slate articles about investing carry a seven-paragraph disclosure of potential conflicts of interest.

He published The Wall Street Self-Defense Manual: A Consumer's Guide to Intelligent Investing in January 2007.

Current career – Internet broadcaster

As of April 2011, Blodget co-hosts the The Daily-Ticker broadcast with Aaron Task weekdays at Yahoo! Finance.

Books

• The Wall Street Self-Defense Manual: A Consumer's Guide to Intelligent Investing. Atlas Books, 2007. ISBN 0977743322.

External links

• Silicon Alley Insider Henry Blodget's multi-author technology blog
• Internet Outsider Henry Blodget's old blog
• The Wall Street Self-Defense Manual – Promotional site for Blodget's first book.