Banned Securities Analyst Makes Good

This week the editors over at Slate decided they'd like to run a piece about Wall Street. Something written in plain English that would give the layperson some useful tips for participating in the nation's investment marketplace. In their own words: "a guide to Wall Street". Who do they ask to write the article? Henry Blodget, who promises to teach me some things I won't learn from my broker, according to the article's title. The article gets off to a rocky start though, when in the first sentence Blodget discloses that he's no longer allowed to work on Wall Street, mainly because of a minor incident in which he lied about securities forcasts and behaved otherwise unethically while working as a managing director at Merrill Lynch. Check out this friendly press release from the Securites and Exchange commission. I guess if I'm open-minded about the whole thing I'd have to admit that being banned for life from the SEC, NYSE, and NASD doesn't necessarily mean you're unqualified to publish sound financial advice, but still...bit of an odd choice. Anyway there's a full disclosure of what happened to him linked in the article, and as it turns out he seems to be providing some honest, useful information. Especially for someone like me, who has no real portfolio to speak of. Check 'er out.