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Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GST who wrote (116557)	1/31/2001 8:25:12 AM
From: Reilly Diefenbach	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Did anyone here see this last night on 60 Minutes II? cbsnews.com For example Amazon was selling for about $275 a share when a little-known analyst, Henry Blodgett, predicted it would go to $400 - even though Amazon had never made a profit. Amazon did go to $400 and beyond. Amazon's backer, Merrill Lynch, responded by replacing its pessimistic Amazon analyst. His replacement? Henry Blodgett. While this was great for Blodgett, it proved not so good for investors, many of whom got soaked when Amazon's value fell 75 percent. Blodgett has said his prediction was based on sound analysis using new ways to measure a company's performance. Wall Street coined a new verb: to "blodgett" a stock. Former Internet analyst Lise Buyer says experienced hands on Wall Street couldn't make sense of soaring target prices. "Those of us who've been in the business for a while looked at the wild targets that people were putting out there, and our jaws dropped," says Buyer. "And then we watched the stocks follow suit." "The market that we had over the past couple of years: Amazon went to 400 because Henry said it would," Buyer says. "It was analysts proclaiming what the stock would do, not analyzing what the businesses said they would do."