My tale starts with me looking down on the lights on New York City listening to Jay Z’s “Empire State Of Mind”; I am about to embark on an opportunity that I thought I would never have in my life. I was going to spend a week with my personal hero Josh Brown, CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management, CNBC contributor, and author of both book and blog. I got here by asking myself a simple question in the fall, “What do I want to do for Interim?” Interim is a program my school organizes in the spring right before spring break where students can participate community service, explore careers, or venture out into the world on various trips. I was considering spending more time at my local Morgan Stanley wealth management and then a thought crossed into my head, “Why should I take the safe route? This is my senior in high school and I better make the most of it.” Then I started to search for Josh’s email and thought about how I was to go about asking him if I could spend time with him. I ended up finding his media email pretty easily and sent him an email explaining what Interim was and how I was a huge fan of his; I also included the clip of him and me on CNBC’s “Fast Money,” hoping that he would remember me. Within thirty minutes I got an email back with the simple message, “you’re in.” He also included his office line and said I could call him anytime.
Monday morning I made a walk longer than I intended to the Ritholtz Wealth Management and received my visitor’s badge; I would have to get a new one every day. I rode the elevator up to office, and I did felt like I was in the scene from Wall Street where Bud Fox meets Gecco for the first time. It turns out all my nerves were for nothing. Josh is the. Most easygoing person I have ever met. He is exactly like you imagine from his TV appearances and his writings. I got to meet everybody in that Monday’s meeting and then I was off. I spent the rest of the day with Kris Venne (@krisvenne) who is the Director of Financial Planning and a CFP. Kris is a super cool guy and I spent my time with him learning about the process in which RWM gets clients and determines whenever they are right for the firm. Kris uses a lot of technology such as Riskalyze which gives clients a risk score based on a questionnaire that the client can then compare to the risk score of their own portfolio. He also spends a lot of time talking with clients when it comes to things such as their portfolios and allocations.
Tuesday was my time with Michael Batnick aka the “Irrelevant Investor” (@michaelbatnick). Michael is the Head of Research and does a number of tasks from deciding if they should add client’s exposure to Europe to doing research for Josh and Barry’s media. With Michael, I spent a lot of time watching the markets and just staying in the know with what was going on. This was important despite RWM having a long-term view they still need to know whether the markets are making drastic changes an example of this was shifting towards ETFs that hedged out the Euro. We also did the research for Josh notes for the show that day. My time with Michael was awesome because he does what I like to do on a daily basis, which is watching the markets, even though I also have a long time horizon. It also helps that he is a really cool person to talk with.
Wednesday was my day with Josh. I spent the day doing research for one of his upcoming pieces and just got to know him. Throughout the day we did everything from listen to Kendrick Lamar’s new album to watch the markets explode after the Fed press conference. I have to admit it is a bit weird just sitting there with your idol and you are having a conversation that you would have with one of your friends. As I further got to know Josh and everyone at RWM, this feeling quickly went away.
Thursday started off with me spending time with Erika Mauro who is the Executive Assistant and Office Manager. There is no one there more important than Erika (sorry guys!). She talks to clients on a daily basis and runs the entire office so that things can run smoothly. She handles all of the client’s needs such as money ins and outs. About 10am I went over to Josh’s office where he told me I would solely be doing his notes for the show today and that I was tagging along. This was perhaps one of the most nerve-racking things I would have done. I was either going to make Josh look good or make him look stupid. From 10am right up until the show started at 12pm, I was working on his notes trying to get them perfect. Once we got to CNBC at around 11:30 I was in awe at just how big their campus is. The news floor was pretty cool because it was set up so that each group of desk was a different show. I was greeted as “Teen Trader!” from my producers when I was on Fast Money (5pm version); I got to meet them, which was very cool because I used the experience in my college essays. I got to watch the show from the control room with the producers, which is an experience by itself. They ended up having me follow them onset where I did a surprise appearance on the show; the scariest part was right before we went live Josh called my name as the camera men are counting down and says “Don’t fuck it up,” and then we were live. I wasn’t as nervous as my first appearance because at the desk you are actually talking to people rather than a camera. Josh and I got back to the office at about 1 pm and I then spent time with the other CFP in the office, Patrick Haley. I had met him earlier in the week, but now I got to spend time with him and Kris. Patrick talks to clients the same as Chris, but Patrick handles all of the trading for the clients. The trading normally occurs with clients who have specific securities such as individual stocks or bonds. While I was with Patrick, Barry came in and told me I was coming with him to Bloomberg where he was going to record intros for his podcast that were about to be released. This was the only time I got one on one time with Barry (@ritholtz). He did have an insanely busy week; he did Bloomberg radio in the morning with Tom Keene twice that week. Apart from this we seemed to always be out of sync when it came to our free time. My time with Barry was fantastic; I learned from earlier conversations that Barry is a tornado. If you want to talk with him you have to be able to keep track of three different conversations and wait till they all converge. Barry and I spent about an hour at Bloomberg, he showed me around what is one of the coolest places I have ever been, and he introduced me to a number of on air personalities. Thursday was a big and busy day.
Friday started with me meeting Josh at the Quinnipiac G.A.M.E. forum where Josh was on a panel all about Social Media in finance. The forum is for college juniors and sophomores who are interested in going into the finance industry. After the panel was over, a number of students stayed after to talk to Josh and meet him. This was when everything came into perspective for me. Apart from Monday morning I didn’t even realize just how big of a deal my internship. I was watching kids stay after the panel for fifteen minutes just trying to meet Josh, and I have spent an entire week with him. I had become desensitized to the people I have spent the week with. Once the conference was over Josh and I had lunch with my parents and afterwards Josh and I said our goodbyes. I spent the rest of the day at the office because I wanted to soak in the last bit of my time rest with everyone. I didn’t want to waste the time I had left, so I spent the rest of the day with Michael. We talked markets and about my experience with them over the week. Once 4pm struck everyone was heading out and I thanked everyone for the experience. They told me to stay in touch with them, and after an experience like that how could I not stay in touch with them? I mean, I got to build a relationship with some of the brightest minds in finance.
I realize this has been a long post, but I want you guys to get a feel for what I experienced. I hope through this reading that those of you out there who have thought about reaching out to your idols or people you respect, that you do it. Take this as a lesson that if you approach your heroes you just may end up spending time with them and ultimately building a relationship with them.
I want to spend these few lines thanking all the people at RWM for taking me on for the week and letting me sit with each of you. I want to especially thank Josh for reading the email that allowed for me to have this. Going back to Jay Z “New York, concrete jungle where dreams of, There’s nothin’ you can’t do.”

March 27, 2015

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What Im Reading This Morning

http://www.thinkadvisor.com/2015/03/26/explaining-the-markets-explainers (@ritholtz)

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/4th-quarter-gdp-unchanged-at-22-exports-consumers-stronger-2015-03-27?mod=BreakingNewsMain&link=sfmw (Marketwatch)

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-27/cooperman-says-u-s-seeks-information-about-omega-trades (Bloomberg)

http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2015/03/27/morning-moneybeat-how-earnings-could-push-stocks-higher/?mod=WSJBlog&mod=MarketsMain (WSJ)

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-03-26/bbc-s-hypocrisy-shifts-into-top-gear- (Bloomberg veiw)

March 26, 2015

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What Im Reading This Morning

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-26/why-bombing-the-39th-biggest-oil-producer-is-roiling-the-market (Bloomberg)

http://fortune.com/2015/03/25/unconstrained-bond-funds-risk/ (Fortune/ReformedBroker)

http://awealthofcommonsense.com/bonds-are-supposed-to-be-boring/ (Ben Carlson)

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-23/economist-says-u-s-consumer-spending-is-about-to-surge- (Bloomberg)

http://www.businessinsider.com/opening-bell-oct-26-2015-2015-3 (BI)

things are shaking…. admit it, u hav no idea what it all means.

— Pearl (@ppearlman) March 26, 2015

March 25, 2015

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What Im Reading this Morning

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-25/3g-capital-berkshire-to-buy-kraft-foods-merge-it-with-heinz (Bloomberg)

http://www.businessinsider.com/opening-bell-march-25-2015-2015-3 (BI)

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102531887?trknav=homestack:topnews:2 (CNBC)

http://blog.yardeni.com/2015/03/old-age-doesnt-kill-bull-markets-excerpt.html (Yardeni)

http://theirrelevantinvestor.tumblr.com/post/114414080743/are-biotechs-the-new-dot-coms-it-is-impossible-to (the irrelevant investor)

March 24, 2015

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Keep Calm and Ignore the Fed Rate Rise Noise

This month we had a Fed statement and press conference afterwards. The Financial world, media, and twitter were all clamoring about one word “Patient”. Would it be in or not? Does that mean the Fed will raise rates in June or September? If “Patient” if is in is it dovish or hawkish? I was sitting with Josh Brown (aka @ReformedBroker and CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management) at the time when the statement was released and we were both awestruck at the market’s reaction. The equity markets surged higher, bond yields fell off a cliff and so did the US dollar. All of this because the word “Patient” was removed and replaced with what the markets thought was a more dovish statement. I don’t have an opinion on the statement, because my option or any market commentator’s option doesn’t actually matter. In the 1970s Fed chairman Paul Volcker raised interest rates over the weekend with no forward and the markets sold off, but continued to rise years after. If you are a longer term investor (anything over six months) then disregard the noise and know that eventually rates will rise and you will do well to stay in the markets. History tells us this as well. I examined the SPX’s performance from January 1977 through June 1981, I picked this timeline because this was when Volcker started to raise the Fed funds rate to the highest it has ever been(at least post 1954 which is all the data the St. Louis fed has). In January 1977 the Fed funds rate was at 4.61% and peaked out in June 1981 at at 19.1%. The S&P gained 22.101% excluding dividends, something to think about for all you long term investors out there when you are listening to all the people in financial media spew doom and gloom when the Fed takes rates away from zero.