Henry Blodget, the notoriously optimistic Wall Street analyst, briefly enjoyed something akin to a cult following after predicting in 1998 that Amazon.com's stock price would skyrocket to $400 per share.
But Blodget's e-mail messages showed that he was more skeptical in private. For instance, in discussing GoTo.com, one client e-mailed Blodget and asked, "What's so interesting about Goto except banking fees????" Blodget's succinct reply was "nothin." Afterward, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission, he released a "fraudulent" report that was anything but skeptical.
Other e-mail messages that later became public showed that Merrill Lynch and Blodget published a favorable report about Internet Capital Group. But in private e-mail about the company two weeks later, Blodget wrote: "No hopeful news to relate, I'm afraid. This has been a disaster...There really are no 'operations' here to fall back on, so there really is no 'floor' to the stock...We see nothing that will turn this around near-term."
In 2003, Blodget reached a settlement with the SEC that included a $4 million payment and a permanent prohibition on working in the securities industry. Now he's a personal-finance columnist for Slate.com.
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