Analyst Blodget Owns Yahoo Shares, Pumped YHOO Up 7%

Posted by Scott on 21st November, 2007 | 1 comment

I couldn’t resist posting this one. I posted a few days ago about how Henry Blodget, the analyst banned from Wall Street by the SEC in 2003, is trying to weasel his way back into mainstream media. His Friday, November 16, 2007 commentary that Microsoft may be about to buy Yahoo caused Yahoo’s stock price to rise 7% that day, according to a Reuters story (Yahoo shares up on Blodget takeover musings.). Guess what: Blodget owns Yahoo shares. Once again, Blodget demonstrates his undying loyalty: to himself, putting out commentary for personal gain. A post he made on 10/29/07, more than two weeks before his MSFT/ YHOO takeover musings, admited to owning Yahoo stock:

“The higher [Yahoo] stock price would benefit almost everyone, including the company (stronger currency), current employees (more in-the-money options), and employees who were laid off. And, yes, it would also benefit us (Henry Blodget owns Yahoo shares).”

Yahoo (YHOO) Turnaround, Step 2: Layoffs?
Henry Blodget | October 29, 2007

How could the mainstream media miss this? How many times has Blodget been quoted since Friday, with no mention of his SEC ban nor his Yahoo stock ownership?

My advice to Blodget: if you want to make a comeback, either stop talking about companies whose stock you own, or post a disclosure in your commentary to disclose any relevant stock ownership. There’s no such disclosure to be found here in his post that pumped up YHOO by 7%. This is all about credible advice: how can you take someone’s commentary seriously when that person stands to benefit financially from that commentary especially when no disclosure is made?

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Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 at 1:39 am and is filed under Web Business. If you like this post why not subscribe to my full text RSS feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.