Henry Blodget

For the 19th century U.S. federal judge, see Henry Williams Blodgett.

Henry Blodget on June 26, 2012, in New York City

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

Early life

Blodget was born and raised on Manhattan's Upper East Side, the son of a commercial banker. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Yale University, where he was a member of The Society of Orpheus and Bacchus. After college, he taught English in Japan, then moved to San Francisco to try to be a writer while supporting himself by giving tennis lessons. He was also a freelance journalist and 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. He became famous in October 1998, when he predicted that Amazon.com, an Internet stock which had been a public company for a year then trading at $240 and which many on Wall Street were bearish on, would hit what many considered an outrageously bullish one-year price target of $400. Three weeks later Amazon zoomed past it, gaining 128%.

This call received significant media attention, and, two months later, he accepted a position at Merrill Lynch. In those days he became a media celebrity and frequently appeared on CNBC and other similar shows. 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 allegedly 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

He became the CEO, Co-Founder, and Editor in Chief of Silicon Alley Insider, where he was a frequent contributor to the Seeking Alpha website. Prior to co-founding Silicon Alley Insider, Mr. Blodget served as CEO of Cherry Hill Research, a research and consulting firm, and contributed to Slate, Newsweek International, The New York Times, Fortune, Forbes Online, Business 2.0, Euromoney, New York, Financial Times, and other publications. As of 2012, he is the CEO/editor-in-chief of 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, 13-article series entitled "The Wall Street Self-Defense Manual" for the magazine.

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. 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.

He currently lives in Brooklyn.

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 0-9777433-2-2.

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.