Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (117306)	2/10/2001 1:47:02 AM
From: puborectalis	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Glenn,many ML brokers I've spoken with have zero faith in Blodgett's opinions.They keep him on at ML due to factors beyond our controls.He's a rich kid who has connections.

To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (117306)	2/10/2001 11:37:31 AM
From: Bob Kim	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

I am a client of Merrill and have emailed asking the powers to be to dismiss Blodget. Glenn, I think a complaint letter has to be in print to get a response. You should include some bulletproof examples such as setting high price targets without any reasonable basis and never mentioning them again and making false and misleading statements such as below from thestreet.com: TSC: Your coverage of Internet companies, it seems, puts you in an awkward position: You're saying Microsoft's an accumulate and you're saying DoubleClick (DCLK:Nasdaq - news) is an accumulate. I think, if you ask, nine out of 10 people on the street would rather put their money in Microsoft than in DoubleClick. Blodget: The way we deal with that is something I think a lot of people don't often focus on in terms of Merrill Lynch research. We actually do have risk ratings that we put on every stock. Microsoft is less risky than DoubleClick, and we have an above-average risk rating of a "C" on Microsoft, and we have a high risk rating ["D"] on DoubleClick and every other Internet company we cover. And "high risk" obviously means "could go to zero." We don't think Microsoft is going to zero. BTW, DCLK is rated 2-1 versus MSFT's 2-2, by default, higher rated stocks are supposed to be recommended over lower-rated stocks. Blodget report (2/2/01): We are changing our risk rating on AOL from High Risk (D), to Above Average Risk (C). AOL is now the only stock in our Internet universe that is NOT rated High Risk (D). The interesting thing is that not only was AOL rated "D" for years, TWX was also rated "D". The response letter usually contains a bunch of boilerplate text and a few customized sentences.

To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (117306)	2/11/2001 1:22:13 AM
From: manalagi	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

I am a client of Merrill and have emailed asking the powers to be to dismiss Blodget. I am reasonably sure Merrill's powers that be will not listen to me but at least I tried. Glenn: Any brokerage firm is mainly interested whether the analyst can bring business to the firm. The juiciest business is the underwriting of equity or debt offerings. That's why only a handful of those 5000 stocks covered by analysts are rated a "Sell". Although commission is a part of brokerage firms revenue, the easy money comes from underwriting. How else can you explain Blodget was paid $ 15 million? He even got promoted to cover Softie. Most of us agree that Blodget analyses do not make sense. Unfortunately, the market listens to him. Witness MSFT stock dropped when he started coverage on the company.