Starting over, again

In October 2007 when the stock market was making new all-time nominal highs, I started blogging. At the time, I was an investment advisor, who co-owned a small firm and the blog was meant mostly for clients, but there was something cathartic about the process. Writing helped me think through some of the larger issues that I had to analyze as the chief investment officer of the firm, and forced me to communicate those ideas so that every client, regardless of financial acumen or portfolio size, could understand what was going on.

As I look back at the first blog, published on October 15 2007, there is something telling: despite the hoopla and euphoria surrounding the stock market highs, I chose to focus on the 20 year anniversary of the 1987 stock market crash. I’m not exactly a contrarian, but I do tend to highlight the things that can go very wrong (or very right) for individuals.

Unlike most journalists or personal finance “experts,” I spent the majority of my career in the trenches, first as a trader on the floor of the Commodities Exchange of New York (COMEX), then as a retail investment adviser. That means that I understand how hard it is for all of us to balance the constant drumbeat of fear and greed.

Those experiences have informed everything I have done in my second career as a media talking head at CBS. The past four years has been an amazing experience—I learned so much from my colleagues at CBS Interactive. But down deep, I am still an entrepreneur, so in this next phase of my career, I will be writing here, at my own web site, while continuing to serve as the CBS News Senior Business Analyst on radio and television.

The move allows me to write about the topics that I think you want to hear about, not the ones that will generate SEO traffic. Feel free to let me know topics that are of interest to you.