They are the new tastemakers of Web investing, the supposed seers of Bubble-Tech 2.0. And despite the stock market’s recent craziness, they are almost as hot as some of the stocks they cover.
These Internet analysts are nowhere nearly as famous (or infamous) as Jack Grubman and Henry Blodget, who came to symbolize the conflicted, let’s-put-lipstick-on-this-pig research of the dot-com era. Nor are they as influential as Mary Meeker, the onetime Queen of the Net at Morgan Stanley, whose pronouncements captivated the investing public in the late 1990s.
But not since those heady days of the Nasdaq stock market bubble has working as a technology analyst seemed so, well, sexy. Even as the economy wobbles again, there’s money to be made in providing banking advice to big names like Facebook. And the great investment houses are sparring over specialists in Web search and social media, who are hired to tell the stories of these hot companies to investors. Such analysts have been jumping from one bank to another, chasing the highest offer. Today, some of these analysts are pulling down several million dollars a year — figures that, not so long ago, would have been almost unthinkable.
Even in Wall Street circles, some people wonder whether all of this is another sign that Internet mania is again spinning out of control. Add to this the recent turbulence in the financial markets — including big declines in technology stocks — and you might conclude that some analysts yet again were telling investors to buy at exactly the wrong time….
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/08/20/star-analysts-are-back-no-autographs-please/
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