Yahoo!, Amazon Decked by Holly

Merrill Lynch analyst Henry Blodget achieved fame riding the Internet on its way up. Now Lehman Brothers' Holly Becker is achieving similar notoriety on Net's way down.

Becker's cautious comments about Yahoo! (YHOO Quote - Cramer on YHOO - Stock Picks) Monday sparked a selloff in the Internet bellwether, sending the stock down 12.19, or 9%, to close at 122.06 Monday.

This wasn't the first time that Becker's comments have knocked the stock. When she initiated coverage on Yahoo! with a neutral on June 21, the stock, which had closed the night before at 148, fell 3.5% to close at 142.81.

Nor is it the first time that Becker has gone more bearish than most of her fellow analysts on Internet companies. The analyst, who moved from Salomon Smith Barney to Lehman in March, initiated coverage of Amazon.com (AMZN Quote - Cramer on AMZN - Stock Picks) at Lehman with a buy in May. But a month after Lehman Brothers fixed-income analyst Ravi Suria issued a negative report on Amazon, Becker followed suit, downgrading the company to neutral from buy hours before Amazon announced its financial results for the second quarter -- and one day after President Joseph Galli departed to become CEO of Internet business-to-business operation VerticalNet (VERT Quote - Cramer on VERT - Stock Picks). Amazon's stock fell 4%, to 36.06, on the day of Becker's report; it fell an added 13%, to 31.38, the following day, as analysts' disappointment with Amazon's results sank in. (Becker reiterated her neutral rating on Amazon Monday; the stock fell 2%, to close at 39.13.)

Becker's calls make a nice counterpoint to the bullish prediction that Blodget made in December 1998 that Amazon's stock price would hit (presplit) 400 within the next 12 months. In fact, the stock hit that mark in a matter of weeks; and not long afterwards, Blodget, then at CIBC Oppenheimer, made the jump to Merrill Lynch, which is slightly better known.

In 1998, Becker earned a top ranking from Institutional Investor for her coverage of both household products and cosmetics and personal care products. But though she started covering Internet stocks at Salomon in 1999, she didn't quite hit the public's radar screen again until her skeptical research at Lehman got published.

Becker isn't completely down on the Internet, though. She has an outperform, her firm's second-highest rating, on priceline.com (PCLN Quote - Cramer on PCLN - Stock Picks) and America Online (AOL Quote - Cramer on AOL - Stock Picks). She also has a buy rating on eBay (EBAY Quote - Cramer on EBAY - Stock Picks). Her firm hasn't done underwriting for Yahoo!, Amazon, priceline, eBay or AOL.

Becker didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.