Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Joe Wisenthal.
Speaker 3: And I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2: Tracy, I know I'm biased, We're probably biased. I'm certainly biased.
Speaker 4: Speak for yourself, Joe, I myself have no emotions. That's
Speaker 4: for our opinions about anything.
Speaker 3: That's why I host a podcast.
Speaker 2: That's right, we're the question askers, we're not the answers.
Speaker 2: But I am sort of biased about anyone who sort
Speaker 2: of grew up in financial media in like the two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight, two thousand and nine era, two thousand
Speaker 2: and seven. You know, like we're just a different breed.
Speaker 2: We're just a different we're just a little cut above.
Speaker 4: I think it was definitely a moment in financial media
Speaker 4: that I think has yet to be recaptured because there
Speaker 4: were two things that were happening simultaneously. So one you
Speaker 4: had the financial crisis where everything was going haywire, and
Speaker 4: it was all going haywire in a relatively new way. Yes,
Speaker 4: people had to suddenly learn what synthetic CDOs were, how
Speaker 4: the revered the show, Okay, how the repo market worked.
Speaker 4: Didn't learn all of that, and then at the same time,
Speaker 4: you had like a big format change because you had
Speaker 4: all these blogs that suddenly burst out of nowhere. And
Speaker 4: at that time, the combination of like the new blogging
Speaker 4: format plus the news cycle itself, which was so weird
Speaker 4: and so fast paced, really meant that blogs were kind
Speaker 4: of the perfect platform to cover the financial crisis. They
Speaker 4: had an edge at that time. And I feel again
Speaker 4: to your point, probably a bit of personal bias there,
Speaker 4: but like I feel like it was a very special moment.
Speaker 2: It was you nailed it exactly. It was the two
Speaker 2: things happening at once that made that a distinct time,
Speaker 2: which is right, all this stuff was happening, and there
Speaker 2: were just new formats, and then you know, Twitter came
Speaker 2: around then, so, uh do you know, and I joined
Speaker 2: I tweet a lot. Do you know when I joined Twitter?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 4: Two thousand and nine, No.
Speaker 2: March two thousand and eight, Okay, And I was at
Speaker 2: south By Southwest when bear Sterns collapsed, and and then
Speaker 2: you know, it was before everyone knew that the world
Speaker 2: was totally melting down. But also then I remembered I
Speaker 2: have like distinct memories of that time because you know,
Speaker 2: JP Morgan made that two dollars per share offer for
Speaker 2: bear Sterns, and like a week before bear Sterns have
Speaker 2: been trading at like sixty or something like that. And
Speaker 2: I very distinctly remember a few people on Twitter talking
Speaker 2: about like know that because people thought there was a typo,
Speaker 2: remember like oh, it must be twenty or something like that.
Speaker 2: And I saw these voices who actually knew what they
Speaker 2: were talking about, like, no, this two dollars makes sense,
Speaker 2: this is a real number, et cetera. Eventually, I think
Speaker 2: they bought them for like ten dollars a share because
Speaker 2: the government pressured them. But that was the first place
Speaker 2: it was like I was getting information from people who
Speaker 2: knew what they were talking about faster and sharper than
Speaker 2: I was getting any other platform.
Speaker 3: And who were those people too?
Speaker 2: I think one of them was Howard Lindzen and I
Speaker 2: think another one was Roger Ehrenberg, which were like two
Speaker 2: of the names who are like, you know based, But anyway,
Speaker 2: there were many other names, including someone we're going to
Speaker 2: talk to right now.
Speaker 3: I'm very excited.
Speaker 4: So the person we're about to speak to, I remember
Speaker 4: linking to his stuff right when I started financial blogging,
Speaker 4: which was September two thousand and eight on ft Alphavil
Speaker 4: and again the world blowing up around that time, Lehman
Speaker 4: collapsing all of that, and I remember constantly linking to
Speaker 4: his stuff at the time.
Speaker 3: And then the other thing.
Speaker 4: This is kind of weird, but the other thing I
Speaker 4: associate with our guests. The first time I ever met
Speaker 4: him in person was in New York, and that was
Speaker 4: the last time I ever drank a blue moon, because
Speaker 4: I think I have like three of them. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: but it was too much. And ever since then I
Speaker 4: never again. No blue moons, but yes, lots of lots
Speaker 4: of our guest for sure.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm really excited. I think it's his first time
Speaker 2: coming on the show. We are going to be speaking
Speaker 2: to the one and only Josh Brown, a legend. Back
Speaker 2: in the old days, when we were linking to his blog,
Speaker 2: it was the reform broker. He son set it that
Speaker 2: he's a new he writes a new.
Speaker 3: Blue moved on to bigger things. For sure.
Speaker 2: We've done too much bigger things, but that was huge.
Speaker 2: He's currently the CEO of Ridholt's Wealth Management. He is
Speaker 2: the author of a brand new book You Weren't Supposed
Speaker 2: To See That Secrets every investor should know. I'm so excited.
Speaker 2: He hosts a popular podcast as well to compound. Josh Brown,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 5: Outlaws, Tracy. I'm drinking a blue moon right now.
Speaker 2: That's perfect.
Speaker 5: Josh. Do you remember that?
Speaker 3: I can deal as long as it's you and not me.
Speaker 3: That's good.
Speaker 5: Josh.
Speaker 2: Do you remember the where we met the first time?
Speaker 2: Do you remember where it was?
Speaker 5: I remember? Oh man, you do remember? Okay, I'm going
Speaker 5: to take a guess. I remember there was one night
Speaker 5: where Scott Bell got all the bloggers together at the
Speaker 5: Campbell Apartment on the on the Vanderbilt side of Grand Central,
Speaker 5: and that's like a speakeasy bar. And I remember meeting
Speaker 5: a lot of people who were writing and tweeting about
Speaker 5: markets the first time that night, and I think you
Speaker 5: were one of them. I'm not sure, so it was
Speaker 5: that night.
Speaker 2: My recollection is a little different. I thought we went
Speaker 2: to the Michael Jordan's Steakhouse, which is also in Grand
Speaker 2: Central and just on the.
Speaker 5: We might have done both.
Speaker 2: We might have done both, but we both agree. I
Speaker 2: think it was probably two thousand and nine Grand Central,
Speaker 2: either in the Campbell Apartment or the Michael Jordan's Steakhouse,
Speaker 2: which sadley is no longer there, but yeah, that was
Speaker 2: the first time, and now we're here.
Speaker 5: It was a Cambrian explosion of market commentators who were
Speaker 5: coming from non traditional market commentary backgrounds prior to that moment,
Speaker 5: just to button up what Tracy was saying. Prior to
Speaker 5: that moment, most of the people who were commenting on
Speaker 5: markets in a big way and were able to get
Speaker 5: their views out to the public were coming from Wall
Speaker 5: Street or were traditional journalists, and you know, they were
Speaker 5: like the public relations firm would book the person on TV,
Speaker 5: the person would go on Bloomberg or on CNBC, and
Speaker 5: you know, they were like they had pedigree, and they
Speaker 5: also had guardrails. They had things that they wouldn't they
Speaker 5: weren't able to touch because they were connected to like
Speaker 5: a Fortune five hundred company. And then all of a sudden,
Speaker 5: this Cambrian explosion on the Internet. All of a sudden,
Speaker 5: you've got people amassing large followerships who have no pedigree,
Speaker 5: who have no publicist, and who have no guardrails and
Speaker 5: are able to say things that you know, other people
Speaker 5: would gasp at. But then that became the mainstream, and
Speaker 5: then all of a sudden, the media was picking up
Speaker 5: those voices rather than the traditional voices that they had
Speaker 5: been so accustomed to booking. And I think all three
Speaker 5: of us, you know, benefited from having been early and
Speaker 5: visible in that era and to this day, like a
Speaker 5: lot of the people that came out of the woodwork
Speaker 5: at that time are you know, now part of the establishment.
Speaker 5: So it was a really cool thing to be a part.
Speaker 5: I can count yeah, listen, I could count on on
Speaker 5: maybe two hands the people who are talking about finance
Speaker 5: on Twitter in March of two thousand and nine. When
Speaker 5: I started, it was a really small group of people
Speaker 5: because most professionals had compliance departments that just would not
Speaker 5: let them talk that way. Now of course, now, of
Speaker 5: course the compliance department is like when are you starting
Speaker 5: a podcast? So it's it's changed a lot. But we
Speaker 5: were there, the three of us, and you know, we
Speaker 5: can come up with a whole bunch of the names,
Speaker 5: but there aren't that many.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And to be fair, so one of the advantages
Speaker 4: that I think bloggers and people who were on Twitter
Speaker 4: at the time had over traditional media was just the
Speaker 4: immediacy of that publishing platform because things were happening so
Speaker 4: fast right, like, within within a single day, you would
Speaker 4: have like ten history making stories all happening at once,
Speaker 4: and the newspapers and traditional media to some extent, just
Speaker 4: couldn't keep up, whereas if you're tweeting about it, if
Speaker 4: you're blogging about it in real time, you really had
Speaker 4: a competitive advantage. But Josh, I know you've written about
Speaker 4: this before, but for the benefit of our listeners, why
Speaker 4: did you get into blogging in the first place, Because again,
Speaker 4: people take it as a given now that you're on
Speaker 4: social media if you want to get ahead in your career,
Speaker 4: But back then it was a very new and to
Speaker 4: some extent, risky thing.
Speaker 5: So I'm working at a third tier broker dealer in
Speaker 5: two thousand and eight, and like many other firms on
Speaker 5: Wall Street, they were seeing their revenue implode and you know,
Speaker 5: struggling and you know, raising money to try to stay
Speaker 5: in business, and you know, I go to the compliance
Speaker 5: officer and I'm like, Hey, I'm reading this blog by
Speaker 5: this guy barrio it Holtz, and I'm reading a bunch
Speaker 5: of blogs and they're doing a really great job describing
Speaker 5: what's happening. Every day. There's more news. It seemed like
Speaker 5: like every minute there was more news, and the people
Speaker 5: that were covering at best were not at the Wall
Speaker 5: Street Journal. They were independent bloggers like Tatas Visconta and
Speaker 5: Eddie Elfinbne and Barry and Eve Smith at Naked Capitalism
Speaker 5: and The Epicurean deal Maker and Med Faber. But these
Speaker 5: are like, these are people who they either work on
Speaker 5: Wall Street or they used to, or they talk to
Speaker 5: people that work on Wall Street, and they just there's
Speaker 5: so much more urgency to the way that they're describing
Speaker 5: this unfolding crisis. So I said, I said to my
Speaker 5: compliance officer, Hey, I know, like we have compliance restrictions
Speaker 5: and stuff, but if I stay within the lines of
Speaker 5: FINRA is at that time, I'm a retail broker. If
Speaker 5: I stay within the lines of what finra says I
Speaker 5: can and can't say, can I do a blog? And
Speaker 5: he looks at me. To his credit, he goes, I
Speaker 5: gotta be honest with you. I don't even know if
Speaker 5: this place is going to be around tomorrow. I don't
Speaker 5: give a shit, Like do whatever, do whatever you want
Speaker 5: to do. Just just just make sure you print a
Speaker 5: copy of everything that you're hitting publish on and bring
Speaker 5: it to me. And I'll sign it. And so I
Speaker 5: appreciate him to this day because he was he was
Speaker 5: dealing with much bigger issues. And you know, around that time,
Speaker 5: there were so few people that had been given the
Speaker 5: liberty to do that. I always tell people how lucky
Speaker 5: I am. There were so few people in my position
Speaker 5: who had been given the liberty to speak freely on
Speaker 5: the internet. I was one of them. And as a result,
Speaker 5: there was such a th for knowledge amongst the general
Speaker 5: public that I was able to build a really big
Speaker 5: following before you know, thousands of other people would start blogs.
Speaker 5: So being early and you know, having that advantage, I'll
Speaker 5: never not appreciate that I had the opportunity to do that.
Speaker 2: I have a personal question in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine, and your boss is saying, I
Speaker 2: don't even know if we're going to be around. So
Speaker 2: I was like living in an apartment in Brooklyn. I
Speaker 2: had two roommates at the time. It was sort of
Speaker 2: the whole thing was very interesting. You hit a career,
Speaker 2: you were at a brokerage. I believe you had a
Speaker 2: daughter at least by that point. What's that like with
Speaker 2: the anxiety of like you have like I didn't really
Speaker 2: have any responsibilities. I could sort of sit there eating
Speaker 2: my popcorn watching things employe, but you were in it,
Speaker 2: and presumably you know, you had like supportive what's that
Speaker 2: like supporting a family and being in the mix and
Speaker 2: being at a company where it looks like the world
Speaker 2: is ending.
Speaker 5: So I'm living in a rent control department on the
Speaker 5: upper east side Rupert Towers, which used to be the
Speaker 5: Rupert Brewery that sponsored the Yankees. I'm up on ninetieth
Speaker 5: and Third Avenue. I'm commuting down on the sixth train
Speaker 5: to forty second Street every day. My office is in
Speaker 5: the Helmsley Building, which is now called two thirty Park,
Speaker 5: but I'll always call it the Helmsley Building, And on
Speaker 5: the left side of the building is Barri Stearns. The
Speaker 5: right side of the building is JP Morgan. You know,
Speaker 5: a lot of my friends from college are bond salesman
Speaker 5: at Bear. My wife's best friend works at Lehman Brothers.
Speaker 5: She works at Golden Sacks. And I'm just surrounded by
Speaker 5: people that work at, you know, some of the biggest
Speaker 5: banks in the country, because those were the big employers
Speaker 5: in New York and so, you know, it was highly
Speaker 5: anxious we were in our i don't know, mid to
Speaker 5: late twenties, so everybody was going out and drinking a
Speaker 5: lot and just like commiserating. But I'll never forget the
Speaker 5: day bear Stearns closed because it was the same day
Speaker 5: as that as the Saint Patrick's Day parade. So like,
Speaker 5: out of more big curiosity, myself and all my fellow
Speaker 5: brokers walk around the corner from Helmsley over to the
Speaker 5: quote unquote the bear Stearns Building, which by the way,
Speaker 5: had just finished construction a year before. A lot of
Speaker 5: people don't know that. They spent ten years building it
Speaker 5: and then the firm went out of business deal later.
Speaker 5: So we walk around the corner. We see Aaron Burnett,
Speaker 5: who at that time is CNBC. She's sitting at a
Speaker 5: folding table doing live coverage from in front of the
Speaker 5: bear Stearns building, and behind her almost the entire Saint
Speaker 5: Patrick's Day Parade is coming off of Fifth Avenue where
Speaker 5: it ends, and like people are like publicly drunk, and
Speaker 5: there's green hats and bugles and you know they're blowing
Speaker 5: horns and there's horse and meanwhile you look behind that
Speaker 5: and you see white collar workers coming out of the
Speaker 5: front of the building with cardboard boxes with all their
Speaker 5: stuff in it. It's I want to find that footage
Speaker 5: because I don't I don't think people appreciate the extent
Speaker 5: to which it was just an absolute daily circus. And
Speaker 5: not long after, that same scene would be repeated in
Speaker 5: Times Square, where Lehman Brothers was headquartered. They literally took
Speaker 5: the sign off the front of the building almost symbolically,
Speaker 5: and you have thousands of people coming out of the
Speaker 5: front of the building with cardboard boxes. Some of them
Speaker 5: would get recalled the next day when Barkley's bought it.
Speaker 5: But that was those were the times that we lived in.
Speaker 5: And you know, I think one underappreciated aspect of this
Speaker 5: is it's only like five or six years removed from
Speaker 5: the nine to eleven era, and it just felt like
Speaker 5: trauma after trauma after trauma. So that was the New
Speaker 5: York in which I worked and lived and started to write.
Speaker 5: And about a month after I launched The Reformed Broker,
Speaker 5: the Madoff thing broke. So we went from so we
Speaker 5: went from bear Stearns to a year later Lehman Brothers
Speaker 5: aig the tarp vote blah blah blah blah blah, and
Speaker 5: just when you think it's over. The most trust shattering
Speaker 5: revelation of a Ponzi scheme in the history of finance breaks,
Speaker 5: and so I just had endless fodder to write about
Speaker 5: and maybe to answer your question. That helped serve as
Speaker 5: a distraction from all of the anxiety in which people
Speaker 5: working on Wall Street, you know, had to live.
Speaker 4: I remember when the Madoff thing broke, I think it
Speaker 4: was later in two thousand and eight, was it?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: And I remember the headline December Yeah, and the headline
Speaker 4: on the ft Alphaville post, the very first post on
Speaker 4: the topic is one of my all time favorites.
Speaker 3: It wasn't by me.
Speaker 4: I think it was by our founder Paul Murphy, but
Speaker 4: it was he made off with it, which was at
Speaker 4: the time a very original pun and sticks in it
Speaker 4: became less original as the months went on and the
Speaker 4: story went on. Okay, what happened? So what happened to
Speaker 4: the brokerage that you were working at? And like, how
Speaker 4: did you manage the career transition away from blogging and
Speaker 4: into I mean, you basically run an investment and a
Speaker 4: media empire at this point, So how did that happen?
Speaker 5: All? Right? So I'm still a broker, but I'm also
Speaker 5: a co branch manager. And it's interesting retail investors didn't
Speaker 5: at least the type of investor. We weren't really dealing
Speaker 5: with investors. We were dealing with gamblers, people that were
Speaker 5: trading stocks. And around that same time you had the
Speaker 5: introduction of the two x and then the three X
Speaker 5: in xctfs. So the ticker symbols are now infamous. You
Speaker 5: had the TNA and the TZA. One of those was
Speaker 5: triple long, the Russell two thousand, the other was triple short.
Speaker 5: You had the FAS and the FAZ. Those were the
Speaker 5: triple long and triple short financial sector in the XCTF.
Speaker 5: And that's what the retail brokers pivoted to. They were
Speaker 5: no longer pitching stocks because everything looked uninvestable. I mean,
Speaker 5: you literally had a fifty seven percent peak to trough
Speaker 5: decline in the S and P. And by the way, again,
Speaker 5: that same thing had happened from the dot com bubble
Speaker 5: through NRON world Com nine to eleven. So like after
Speaker 5: ten years of that kind of volatility, people were just like,
Speaker 5: you know what, I'm going to invest in volatility, And
Speaker 5: so that's what the brokers, the retail brokers pivoted to
Speaker 5: I'm a co branch manager. I have to send letters
Speaker 5: to the clients where they disclaim, yes, I want to
Speaker 5: be trading the three x long or short Russell two thousand.
Speaker 5: Like the clients would sign the letters and that would
Speaker 5: give the brokers carte blanche to just you know's all right,
Speaker 5: let's play. We're in the game. You would have these
Speaker 5: are ETFs that are trading I don't know, hundreds of
Speaker 5: millions of dollars maybe billions of dollars in in volume,
Speaker 5: and you could be down twenty percent in the morning
Speaker 5: and then up twenty percent in the afternoon. It was
Speaker 5: just the wild West. And I looked around and I said,
Speaker 5: what the hell am I doing this for? Like, no
Speaker 5: one is being helped by this activity, even the brokers.
Speaker 5: They were barely making money. So it was just like
Speaker 5: it was an epiphany that I had up until then
Speaker 5: spent ten years doing retail brokerage, and nobody was better
Speaker 5: off for it, not me, not my clients, not the
Speaker 5: firm I worked for. So I started to get really
Speaker 5: curious about, well, what are what are normal people doing?
Speaker 5: And like what should I be doing to actually help
Speaker 5: people in this profession? And it became really obvious that
Speaker 5: I was on the wrong side of the boat. So
Speaker 5: the brokerage side, the Series seven side, where you're selling investments,
Speaker 5: versus the investment advisor side, where you're giving advice and
Speaker 5: the investing is incidental to the advice, and you're not
Speaker 5: selling products, you're building portfolios and you're helping people really
Speaker 5: solve the puzzle of how are they going to retire,
Speaker 5: how are they going to pay for their kids college, etc.
Speaker 5: So I knew that I was on the wrong side
Speaker 5: within the profession, and in those days, most people were.
Speaker 5: There were more people that were registered representatives or Series
Speaker 5: seven license brokers than there were true financial advisors. And
Speaker 5: so my decision, guys was I'm going to be a
Speaker 5: reformed broker and I'm going to go over to the
Speaker 5: investment advisor side. But then the catch was, well, how
Speaker 5: do you do that? How do you leave? How do
Speaker 5: you leave the brokerage side and go over to the
Speaker 5: advice side? And I didn't know. So it wasn't until
Speaker 5: twenty ten that I met Barry, who is, you know,
Speaker 5: at that time my idol. Now he's my partner, but
Speaker 5: I when I met him, I sat with him and
Speaker 5: I said, all right, here's my problem, or he said
Speaker 5: here's I didn't say anything first, Barry did like an
Speaker 5: hour so I want to remind people. And of course
Speaker 5: Barry is a host of a show on Bloomberg and
Speaker 5: so okay. So Barry says, here's my problem. I have
Speaker 5: the number one best selling book in the country about
Speaker 5: the financial crisis. It's called Bailout Nation, and I think
Speaker 5: it proceeded to big to fail and all the rest.
Speaker 5: So he's all right, at the number one book in
Speaker 5: the country on the financial crisis. I actually predicted the
Speaker 5: crisis on my blog. I called it in real time.
Speaker 5: I predicted the market crash, and I had my phone
Speaker 5: is ringing off the hook because I also predicted the bottom.
Speaker 5: So he in the New York Times three days before
Speaker 5: the market bottomed, he said, I don't know if there's
Speaker 5: a thousand more points down from here, but I think
Speaker 5: you buy them. And literally three days later, the market bottom.
Speaker 5: So the phones are ringing off the hook at the
Speaker 5: RIA that he works at. And he's not a financial advisor,
Speaker 5: he's a strategist. He doesn't talk to clients, so he's like,
Speaker 5: my problem is the phones are bringing off the hook
Speaker 5: the emails are pouring in. People are like, Barry, just
Speaker 5: take my money, take my money, take my money. I
Speaker 5: don't do that. So I don't know how to help
Speaker 5: these people. I said, Oh, okay, I have the opposite problem.
Speaker 5: I'm ready to help people. Nobody's calling me. I don't know.
Speaker 5: I don't know where to get my next client from.
Speaker 5: So we teamed up and it was like lightning in
Speaker 5: a bottle. Like I'm telling you guys, we had like
Speaker 5: hundreds of people a month just call the firm. I
Speaker 5: would start talking about like how we're going to invest
Speaker 5: their money, and they'd be like, just shut up, here's
Speaker 5: my Social Security number, Like open me an account, and
Speaker 5: I'm leaving Merrill Lynch, I'm leaving, I'm leaving Leman, I'm
Speaker 5: leaving this. From leaving that firm, I get my money
Speaker 5: out of there, and I want to work with Barry.
Speaker 5: So my transition was like this insane rollercoaster of going
Speaker 5: from like nobody wants to talk to me, and then
Speaker 5: the next day it's like, oh my god, Josh, how
Speaker 5: do I get you guys money? And that's how it started.
Speaker 5: And you know, we've been we've been running ever since.
Speaker 2: Uh when so there's a lot of questions that I
Speaker 2: have a different past week could go down. So you
Speaker 2: start the advisory with Barry, and now it's huge and
Speaker 2: you have all advisors all over the country, so multiple offices,
Speaker 2: et cetera. And we could talk about that more on
Speaker 2: the media side, So you had been doing the blogging,
Speaker 2: you know, I think both of us, like I started
Speaker 2: blogging in like two thousand and six or whatever. You know,
Speaker 2: it was just to write and I didn't think anything
Speaker 2: would really come of that aspect other than like, you know,
Speaker 2: personal notebook, et cetera. When did it seem like the
Speaker 2: media side of your career was also getting could be
Speaker 2: like a real thing that like is not just like
Speaker 2: a notebook or whatever, but something that like, oh there's
Speaker 2: like this can grow and this can grow your profile.
Speaker 2: And obviously now you're on CNBC and you have a
Speaker 2: conference biz and by the way, if you're listening to this,
Speaker 2: I believe it is going to be released the day
Speaker 2: that we're all out at your future Proof conference. But
Speaker 2: when did you sort of realize that there's something big
Speaker 2: happening on the media side that could be more than
Speaker 2: just a blog that you like, you know, tell people
Speaker 2: what's going on?
Speaker 5: So all right, so I'm writing every day, yeah, and
Speaker 5: I'm writing every day. Yeah, I'm a man on fire
Speaker 5: and I am and I don't. So. I think the
Speaker 5: charm of what I was doing then is that I
Speaker 5: never presented myself as like I'm like this, you know,
Speaker 5: billionaire hedge fund manager, or I'm a cheap strategist at
Speaker 5: you know, Goldman Sachs, you know, caliber market commentator. I
Speaker 5: never I can't help it. I was always ever just me.
Speaker 5: And so I was writing from the perspective of a
Speaker 5: grunt in the trenches on Wall Street, suffering through all
Speaker 5: the ups and downs like everyone else, and talking about
Speaker 5: what it was like to talk to clients, talking about
Speaker 5: what it was like to navigate, you know, all of
Speaker 5: the various cross currents that were happening, but from a
Speaker 5: street level. And I think the readership appreciated that. And
Speaker 5: what ended up happening was it became popular enough that
Speaker 5: professionals in the financial media started like people were sending
Speaker 5: them links, and then they started to share those links
Speaker 5: in their editorial meetings. And the first people that put
Speaker 5: me on TV were CNN Money, my friend Caleb Silver.
Speaker 5: I was like, in with this group of other financial
Speaker 5: bloggers with Howard Lindzen and who's a venture capitalist at
Speaker 5: the time, and you know, a whole bunch of people.
Speaker 5: And CNN is starting to do more financial content because
Speaker 5: the whole country is like wrapped with what's going on.
Speaker 5: So CNN Money really was my first shot at being
Speaker 5: able to take my writing and turn it into like
Speaker 5: television and commentary. I was also getting a lot of
Speaker 5: calls from the Wall Street Journal. They were linking to
Speaker 5: me every day, and they were like, because they didn't
Speaker 5: set that time. And Tracy will attest to this, Joe,
Speaker 5: you were writing at cluster Stock, which became exciting, but
Speaker 5: like I never will. But the large, the large media firms,
Speaker 5: the large media firms were not staffed up to do
Speaker 5: hourly commentary on every twist and turn in the market.
Speaker 5: So instead of attempting to do that with traditional journalists,
Speaker 5: and they had amazing journalists, they pivoted to this idea
Speaker 5: that all right, we can't cover everything, but we'll do
Speaker 5: a link fest every day and we'll tell the readers
Speaker 5: what where else they can go. So they were serving
Speaker 5: their purpose. Like the Wall Street Journal didn't have at
Speaker 5: that time five people who could write markets blogs. So
Speaker 5: we became the ben fish areas of that vacuum, and
Speaker 5: all of a sudden I start getting called from the
Speaker 5: Wall Street Journal. They're doing video. Kelly Evans is like,
Speaker 5: I don't know, twenty three years old, and she is
Speaker 5: like their lead markets, you know, daily blogger, and she's
Speaker 5: doing video, and she's like, hey, I don't know if
Speaker 5: they're going to allow me to do this, but I
Speaker 5: asked them if I could bring you on and let's
Speaker 5: see what happens. So all of a sudden, I start
Speaker 5: getting calls from Bloomberg and then of course, like eventually
Speaker 5: CNBC calls and they're like, here's the deal. We're talking
Speaker 5: about your blog posts every morning. Are you normal? Like
Speaker 5: we put you on because at that time, bloggers were
Speaker 5: a little bit scary, and there were some scary guys
Speaker 5: you know, on Twitter and writing about finance that ended
Speaker 5: up becoming, you know, obviously these people in maniacs. So
Speaker 5: I'm like, no, I'm normal. I'm working in the industry,
Speaker 5: I'm Series sixty five, I'm registered, I'm overseen by the SEC.
Speaker 5: I have a wife and kids. I'm not gonna I'm
Speaker 5: not gonna come on the air and embarrass anyone. So
Speaker 5: I guess like I had this progression, uh, and I'd
Speaker 5: done enough that people were like, all right, this guy's good.
Speaker 5: And so that's That's really how like the media thing,
Speaker 5: the origin of the media thing happened. It it was
Speaker 5: it was Look, there was a show you guys probably remember.
Speaker 5: It was a show that Fox Business used to tape
Speaker 5: from the lobby the bar pulling Bear at the Waldorf Historia.
Speaker 2: Remember that, Yeah, I remember, all right.
Speaker 5: So it's it's Cody Willard and Eric Bolling and Eric
Speaker 5: Bolling and they're the hosts and they every day, this
Speaker 5: is five days a week. I can't even believe this
Speaker 5: went on. This is seven, this is eight and nine
Speaker 5: every day in the bar at the Waldorf Astoria. They
Speaker 5: set up a TV studio. There are regular people eating
Speaker 5: steaks and drinking in the background, and they did this
Speaker 5: like happy hour show. So they were invited me to
Speaker 5: come down and I'm like, oh, I'm gonna be on
Speaker 5: Fox Business. And then I find out they're like, no, no, no,
Speaker 5: you're not going to be on. You're a blogger. We
Speaker 5: just want you to sit on set and do a
Speaker 5: blog post about the show. And I'm like, well, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 5: I'll show you.
Speaker 3: It's a mistake.
Speaker 2: That's just so like there's something about that that's like
Speaker 2: so perfect. Like two thousand and nine, traditional media trying
Speaker 2: to figure got to do something.
Speaker 4: But this is exactly it. So I I failed the
Speaker 4: normality test, but I think it like it speaks to
Speaker 4: the uncertainty of the moment and how traditional media was
Speaker 4: sort of grappling with this new cast of characters, which
Speaker 4: is like when I was at the FT at the time,
Speaker 4: there was a sense internally that the people on ft Alphaville,
Speaker 4: who were writing good stuff and doing good analysis, should
Speaker 4: have some sort of video format. And then we I
Speaker 4: remember we shot like an initial version of what the
Speaker 4: video could be, and the feedback from our video team
Speaker 4: came back that we were so weird and off putting
Speaker 4: on camera that we should be played by puppets.
Speaker 3: That was an actual suggestion.
Speaker 2: It's funny because I think like if I like there
Speaker 2: was this view that like the bloggers were like these
Speaker 2: weird like sort of like caged wild animals, and like
Speaker 2: I remember going to a conference like two thousand and seven,
Speaker 2: it was a tech conference, it was a little bit
Speaker 2: before and they had like this like special like blogger bullpen,
Speaker 2: like they separated us from the other journalists. But there
Speaker 2: was like but like they get a little space because
Speaker 2: we know they're cool and they're doing something, and so
Speaker 2: they get their own seats. But they're like different and
Speaker 2: they have to be sort of segregated from the other
Speaker 2: people there.
Speaker 5: That was a weird There was There was a there
Speaker 5: was a guy on the air named Dennis Neil and
Speaker 5: he would pick fights with bloggers from the air. So
Speaker 5: he was I don't know what time he was. He
Speaker 5: was on CNBC. I don't know what time his show
Speaker 5: was or whatever, but he had this recurring I'm not
Speaker 5: even kidding, he had a recurring segment called blog you,
Speaker 5: and he would this is all true, you could look
Speaker 5: this up. He would he he would pick a different
Speaker 5: blogger who was like prominent on Twitter each time they
Speaker 5: did the segment and like and like go off on
Speaker 5: this person. And then they started booking the bloggers onto
Speaker 5: his show for like a live debate. It was guys,
Speaker 5: it was wild and I forget the guy's name. One
Speaker 5: guy was just a complete lunatic and on the air
Speaker 5: just went nuts on Dennis Neil. I don't I think
Speaker 5: a month later, Dennis Neil was off the air, and
Speaker 5: the bloggers won. The bloggers won, because yeah, so by
Speaker 5: blog you by twenty ten, every network Bloomberg, Fox, Business, CNBC, CNN,
Speaker 5: anyone covering the market. If you would just turn on
Speaker 5: the TV and watch for an hour, you would see
Speaker 5: somebody that started off as a blogger. So I think
Speaker 5: the freaks one and and you know again like by
Speaker 5: by now it's it's fifteen years later, by now we're
Speaker 5: the establishment. But in that time there were Tracy. You're
Speaker 5: absolutely right, there was like a red line these are
Speaker 5: these are journalists or TV people and these are blog freaks.
Speaker 5: And you know, of course that's that's it's funny now,
Speaker 5: but like that's that's how it was, and crossing over.
Speaker 5: So Barry had crossed over. Barry was on Cudlow like
Speaker 5: three nights a week at the at the peak of
Speaker 5: the crisis, Cudlow had an amazing show at seven I
Speaker 5: think it was at seven o'clock on CNBC every night,
Speaker 5: and it was all chief strategists and economists and some politicians,
Speaker 5: and Barry was on there almost every night, and he
Speaker 5: was a regular and he was like a blueprint of
Speaker 5: how you can go from being a blogger to being
Speaker 5: a mainstream commentator.
Speaker 4: What are the pros and cons of running you know,
Speaker 4: the investment firm, the advisory alongside the media. So, you know,
Speaker 4: I imagine you get there, there's promotional opportunities, you get your
Speaker 4: thoughts out there and some of your ideas. But on
Speaker 4: the other hand, it must take some time. And also
Speaker 4: I can imagine that you know, if you put your
Speaker 4: thoughts out there, some of those inevitably are going to
Speaker 4: be mistakes that people can like bring up and criticize.
Speaker 4: So I'm just wondering how you think about like the
Speaker 4: upsides and the downsides of doing those two things.
Speaker 5: You have to decide that you are willing to be
Speaker 5: publicly wrong and that you are going to have the
Speaker 5: humility that when you're wrong, you're going to turn that
Speaker 5: into content. And some of the most popular blog posts
Speaker 5: of that era not just me, everybody, Here's why I
Speaker 5: got blank wrong. Now, not everybody went that way. There
Speaker 5: are some people that doubled down, tripled down, quadrupled down
Speaker 5: on what they were wrong about and never let it go.
Speaker 5: There are some people that are like macroeconomic geniuses, and
Speaker 5: they're still calling for the double dip recession from twenty
Speaker 5: eleven that never happened. It's coming any day now. But
Speaker 5: I think I think the bet that you had to
Speaker 5: make was that by being humble and by owning your
Speaker 5: mistakes and maybe even turning them into an entertaining way
Speaker 5: to learn something, that the audience would come along with
Speaker 5: you for the ride. And a lot of us did that.
Speaker 5: This is not something I came up with on my own.
Speaker 5: I watched people that I respect own their errors, and
Speaker 5: you know, people like Doug cass who was writing at
Speaker 5: the street dot com. This guy's buying a stock in
Speaker 5: the morning and writing a column about how he's bullish,
Speaker 5: and then telling it in the afternoon and the next
Speaker 5: day he's shorting it. So he had like a lot
Speaker 5: of flexibility in how he thought. So I looked at
Speaker 5: that and I said, all right, So Doug has a
Speaker 5: lot of respect from people all over the street, and
Speaker 5: he's saying, I bought this thing, I'm wrong, it's down,
Speaker 5: I'm gonna sell now. I don't personally believe in invest
Speaker 5: in that way. I don't think that people should be
Speaker 5: frantically switching back and forth bull bear, bull bear, But
Speaker 5: it showed me that you can be open and honest
Speaker 5: with your audience and they will respect you more for it,
Speaker 5: rather than hiding there was as the first show of
Speaker 5: it's kind on on CNBC was Fast Money and one
Speaker 5: of the original cast members it doesn't matter who, and
Speaker 5: it's so long ago, one of the original cast members.
Speaker 5: I remember the producer telling me if he was wrong
Speaker 5: about a stock on like Tuesday night, he wouldn't show
Speaker 5: up on Wednesday. Like, I'm not coming, sorry, I can't
Speaker 5: make the show tonight. So like you could do you could?
Speaker 5: I do that for a few months, but it's gonna
Speaker 5: wear really thin with the audience. So I think having
Speaker 5: the humility and trying to turn the things you're wrong
Speaker 5: about into teachable moments that's been really powerful, and the
Speaker 5: people that have done that have done very well as
Speaker 5: a result.
Speaker 2: We you know, like we could turn that. We could
Speaker 2: just talk forever about this and about that era because
Speaker 2: we're barely scratching their service. No, I just appreciate you
Speaker 2: so much reminding me of some of the hilarious things
Speaker 2: that we're going on. I had totally forgotten about that
Speaker 2: show in the bar, but I remember it the blog
Speaker 2: use segment.
Speaker 4: I remember it.
Speaker 2: This is like great stuff and again memory Lane stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm all about it. There are so many other things
Speaker 2: if we zoom ahead, you know, right now twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: things have changed, you know, like finance Twitter isn't what
Speaker 2: it was, Blogging is different. But things are always evolving,
Speaker 2: and I like to you know, I get anxious about like,
Speaker 2: oh am, I like gonna get stuck in a current
Speaker 2: way of doing things, and then the way people consume
Speaker 2: financial and from will change. Well, I'd be able to
Speaker 2: pivot on time. I like to think I've done an
Speaker 2: okay of sort of like figuring out when to try
Speaker 2: new things and drop old formats. Do you get anxious
Speaker 2: about that yourself? The fact that you know so many
Speaker 2: different new platforms and like trying to you know, worry
Speaker 2: about getting stuck or like what do you think is
Speaker 2: happening right now in finance media?
Speaker 5: So I think I was actually I was talking to
Speaker 5: I was talking to Michael Batnic about this yesterday, so
Speaker 5: it's fresh in my mind. I think in that era
Speaker 5: and for about ten years, yeah, Twitter was the most
Speaker 5: essential platform for making sure that if you took the
Speaker 5: time to write something and put your thoughts out there
Speaker 5: and do the research, that is required when you're writing,
Speaker 5: like if you really put effort into a piece of content,
Speaker 5: Twitter was the way that you could make sure there
Speaker 5: would be distribution. Yeah. Less so Facebook because the pros
Speaker 5: aren't really spending their days on there and it's not
Speaker 5: urgent enough, it doesn't move fast enough. But tweet deck
Speaker 5: was the way that you distributed content, and it was
Speaker 5: extremely powerful because if what you did was good, or
Speaker 5: if people hated it or whatever, if it struck any
Speaker 5: kind of chord, the amplification in the form of retweets
Speaker 5: was more powerful than the Wall Street Journal dot Com
Speaker 5: linking to you, because it was like everybody was resharing
Speaker 5: the best four or five things that had been written
Speaker 5: that day. So this guy, Tatus Wisconsa, he works with
Speaker 5: us now, he's our director of investor Education. He had
Speaker 5: a blog called Abnormal Returns and it was ground zero
Speaker 5: for daily financial commentation.
Speaker 4: That was actually like the first thing you would look
Speaker 4: at when you got into the office in the morning.
Speaker 5: I remember now Tatus is the librarian of finance Twitter.
Speaker 5: If somebody wrote something, he knew it. He read everyone,
Speaker 5: He read everything, and he curated the best ten to
Speaker 5: fifteen things that had been written each day. He did
Speaker 5: it five days a week, did it for more than
Speaker 5: ten years. He's still doing it. And if you made
Speaker 5: Tatus's site, you won. Like that means what you wrote
Speaker 5: that day was legit. That would then be complimented by
Speaker 5: what would happen on Twitter because everyone was reading abnormal returns.
Speaker 5: And there were other notable link fests each day. Deal
Speaker 5: Breaker had one that Best Levin and Matt Levigne worked on,
Speaker 5: and there were a few others. But like that was
Speaker 5: basically like the mixtape that you know, like the rappers
Speaker 5: all wanted to get on the DJ Clu mixtape, which
Speaker 5: would then be sold on the on Canal Street in Chinatown,
Speaker 5: and that's how DJs from around the country would know
Speaker 5: that something is hot. This was very similar, and then
Speaker 5: Twitter would just amplify it and really enable something to
Speaker 5: go viral. That all changed. The first thing that happened
Speaker 5: is the Wall Street Journal and CNBC dot Com and
Speaker 5: even and Yahoo Finance, the distribution channels, they started hiring
Speaker 5: their own bloggers and they stopped linking out, so now
Speaker 5: they never link out. But I remember that taking place,
Speaker 5: and then it's all of a sudden, like all right,
Speaker 5: the mainstream media is no longer going to link out,
Speaker 5: but you still had to have normal returns, and you
Speaker 5: still had Twitter. What's changed in the last few years
Speaker 5: is that Twitter is no longer a worthwhile distribution platform.
Speaker 5: Things go viral if they are really negative or violent
Speaker 5: or racist, or somebody just being piled on for an opinion.
Speaker 5: That's not the climate that it used to be when
Speaker 5: people were trying to share information and debate topics. Now
Speaker 5: they debate personalities. They hate Chamoth or they hate Mark
Speaker 5: Cuban today and then the next day, like you know,
Speaker 5: so somebody got filmed stumbling out of a bar drunk.
Speaker 5: It's not a platform anymore where you could write something
Speaker 5: amazing and anyone's going to pay attention to it. And
Speaker 5: finance Twitter, finance Twitter is a vertical is really small
Speaker 5: within the context of Twitter. He's talked to this guy,
Speaker 5: Aard Podnos, who was quote unquote in charge of finance
Speaker 5: Twitter for Twitter. It was it was one guy overseeing
Speaker 5: what all of us were doing. It was not like
Speaker 5: sports or celebrity.
Speaker 3: Call what does that mean? He was in charge.
Speaker 5: I think that it's awesome. One of my favorite people
Speaker 5: Twitter had him monitor finance Twitter. So anything that had
Speaker 5: a ticker or you know, all the Wall Street people
Speaker 5: that were now tweeting. His job was to oversee what
Speaker 5: people were saying and try to make it helpful for
Speaker 5: the rest of Twitter users to find.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like all the cash tags and all the things
Speaker 2: that sort of formalize it. I don't know.
Speaker 5: So it's over. So it's over, and it's okay. Like
Speaker 5: things things aren't meant to less forever, Like Saturday Night
Speaker 5: Live on the air for fifty years is an anomaly.
Speaker 5: Most things don't go on for more than three or
Speaker 5: four years. So I think you guys correct me if
Speaker 5: I'm wrong. I think peak finance Twitter is let's say,
Speaker 5: twenty ten to twenty twenty. And then in twenty twenty
Speaker 5: things really broke down and it became more of like
Speaker 5: a platform for venting rage and me too, and you know,
Speaker 5: posting disturbing video clips, and it just became less about communities.
Speaker 5: And that's around the time that I think it lost
Speaker 5: its relevance for finance.
Speaker 4: Joe and I were talking about this the other day actually,
Speaker 4: but I think the thing that's missing from Twitter, other
Speaker 4: than like a good feeling among human beings, is sincerity
Speaker 4: and like earnestness. That's kind of what bothers me about
Speaker 4: it is like everything is just about like making the
Speaker 4: best joke that you possibly can, and there's no room
Speaker 4: for like earnestness, Bring back earnestness.
Speaker 5: I liked, well, I like the jokes, but what killed
Speaker 5: what I'm describing is the quote tweet. So not every innovation,
Speaker 5: not every innovation is good. So there was a time
Speaker 5: when if somebody said something smart or posted a great chart,
Speaker 5: you would copy paste that tweet and you would and
Speaker 5: you would repost it and you would say via at
Speaker 5: whoever it was, or you would do a manual, or
Speaker 5: you would do RT. You would write RT, which would
Speaker 5: tell everyone, this is not my original thought, I'm retweeting
Speaker 5: this person. Then they built a product that was a
Speaker 5: quote tweet where you could hit a button and say,
Speaker 5: I want to comment on this above the person's tweet,
Speaker 5: and that facilitated a wave of dunking, and dunking is
Speaker 5: basically like, look, how dumb this person is. So I
Speaker 5: know that there were people that used it positively also,
Speaker 5: but I'm just saying like that was something that Twitter
Speaker 5: built that had a very adverse consequence on the community,
Speaker 5: and it just it devolved into worse than high school.
Speaker 2: You obviously like worked like crazy. You know, you've worked
Speaker 2: like an insane person over the last several years. Both
Speaker 2: Tracy and I have as well. Do you, like, do
Speaker 2: you ever think about slowing down and like taking time
Speaker 2: savoring things like I'm taking my son to a football game.
Speaker 2: I wish I had done more this weekend. I wish
Speaker 2: I had done you know, I had more time, and
Speaker 2: sometimes like, oh, should I have like worked less and
Speaker 2: done more? Stuff like that? Do you ever like have
Speaker 2: anxiety about like, you know, do you have two big
Speaker 2: kind of components of your job. You're very public and stuff.
Speaker 2: Do you ever feel like, oh, slowing down or how
Speaker 2: much longer can you do it? Stuff like that?
Speaker 5: I mean I think about I think about it, but
Speaker 5: then I don't do it. Yeah, that's right. Somebody told
Speaker 5: me you work as though somebody took something away from
Speaker 5: you and you're you're fighting to get it back. Like
Speaker 5: that was their impression of my I don't want to
Speaker 5: say work ethic like I'm like this, like like like
Speaker 5: I'm in the coal mines. I love what I do. Yeah,
Speaker 5: but that I think the pace and the intensity of
Speaker 5: what I've done and what I still do to this day,
Speaker 5: the amount, the volume, and the urgency it it looks
Speaker 5: like it looks like a dog who somebody pulled their
Speaker 5: toy away from them. And I don't know if that's
Speaker 5: inherent to my personality or if you know. One of
Speaker 5: the things I talk about in the new book is
Speaker 5: I there was no safety net. So I never stopped working.
Speaker 5: I never had a period of time where I didn't
Speaker 5: have a job. I went from one thing to another
Speaker 5: thing to another thing because I was terrified of what
Speaker 5: happens if I stop, Like I'm nobody, nobody needs me,
Speaker 5: so I have to stay used. I have to stay useful,
Speaker 5: and I have to so there might be equal parts
Speaker 5: ambition and fear, because if there's no net underneath you,
Speaker 5: when you're on a tightrope, what do you don't stop walking?
Speaker 5: You got you gotta keep walking to the end of
Speaker 5: the tightrope. And by the way, there's no end in sight.
Speaker 5: I don't know where it ends, but I think that's
Speaker 5: probably the best way to describe the why. And it's subconscious.
Speaker 5: I don't think about it every day. I just I
Speaker 5: don't stop because I don't want to stop. I love
Speaker 5: what I do and I think I'm helping people. But
Speaker 5: also I'm afraid of what happens if I stop, Like
Speaker 5: what happens if I fall what if I fall off?
Speaker 5: So that's probably the driving thing. But I don't want
Speaker 5: to give people the impression that I did not spend
Speaker 5: the last eighteen years raising my children and you know,
Speaker 5: building a home, because I really think that I've given
Speaker 5: the circumstances where I started in my profession. I think
Speaker 5: I obviously overachieved relative to you know, what most people
Speaker 5: would have said is my ceiling. And I think I've
Speaker 5: overachieved on the family side as well. Thank God. I
Speaker 5: have a daughter who started college this fall. I have
Speaker 5: another kid in high school, and you know, I like
Speaker 5: to say that everything I do is for them, but
Speaker 5: it's selfishly. It's my own insecurity that drives me. And
Speaker 5: I don't know when that stops. Joe made me, maybe
Speaker 5: talked to me. In five years, maybe I'll feel differently.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I feel like ambition and anxiety are the true
Speaker 4: drivers of productivity and tweets.
Speaker 2: Probably Josh Brown, this was such a blast. I'm so
Speaker 2: glad we made this happen, and I'm looking forward to
Speaker 2: seeing you in just over a week at your conference
Speaker 2: out in Newport when when.
Speaker 5: You guys, you guys were a highlight last year and
Speaker 5: you'll be a highlight again this year. People are so
Speaker 5: excited when they see Joe and Tracy.
Speaker 2: Too, kind man, Tracy, that whole conversation is worth it,
Speaker 2: just to be reminded of the blog you segment un
Speaker 2: CNBC and the the the the I still can't believe
Speaker 2: that was real, the show in the bar, but I
Speaker 2: remember it, and I think I was, like I was
Speaker 2: there like once for a taping or for a party
Speaker 2: for it, so man.
Speaker 3: It really well.
Speaker 4: Also, weird time you reminded me with that bullpen comment,
Speaker 4: like bloggers truly were segregated from everyone else. I remember,
Speaker 4: do you remember going into Goldman Sachs one time because
Speaker 4: they had like a special event for Lloyd Blank Fine
Speaker 4: to talk to to talk about Oh yeah, you.
Speaker 3: Kind of if you want. Although I I.
Speaker 4: I quibble with some of your some of your narration,
Speaker 4: but yeah.
Speaker 2: You know it might have been off the record, so
Speaker 2: I won't Yeah, okay go into details.
Speaker 5: Yes, but yes, the.
Speaker 2: Bloggers were treated like these like weird special creatures, like
Speaker 2: kind of alien, Like everyone knew they were interesting and
Speaker 2: kind of cool. And doing something, but like they weren't
Speaker 2: really the same, and all the traditional media outlets are
Speaker 2: like how do we deal with them? And it was
Speaker 2: very weird times, it was.
Speaker 4: But that was so much fun with Josh and I
Speaker 4: think his his career like to some extent, has mirrored
Speaker 4: the evolution of financial media, I think. And one of
Speaker 4: the few benefits perhaps of getting older is that we've
Speaker 4: been in financial journalism for I don't know, like almost
Speaker 4: twenty years now. Yeah, does that sound right? And so
Speaker 4: some of the people that we were, you know, sort
Speaker 4: of growing up with have gone on to like massive success,
Speaker 4: and Josh is definitely one.
Speaker 5: Of them, and it's well deserved, totally.
Speaker 3: Shall we leave it there.
Speaker 5: Let's leave it.
Speaker 3: There, all right?
Speaker 4: This has been another episode of the Odd Loots podcast.
Speaker 4: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe Wysn't though. You can follow me at
Speaker 2: the Stalwart. Follow Josh on Instagram. He has, wisely, I think,
Speaker 2: probably abandoned us on the other side Downtown Josh Brown.
Speaker 2: Follow our producers Carman Rodriguez at Carman Ermann, Dashel Bennett
Speaker 2: at Dashbot, and Cal Brooks at Cal Brooks. Thank you
Speaker 2: to our producer Moses Ondem. For more Oddlots content, go
Speaker 2: to Bloomberg dot com slash odd Lots, where we have transcripts,
Speaker 2: blog and a newsletter and you can chat about all
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Speaker 2: in our discord discord dot gg slash upline.
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Speaker 3: Thanks for listening.