Barry Ritholtz, Curriculum Vitae
Curriculum Vitae
Barry L. Ritholtz is the founder and chief investment officer of Ritholtz Wealth Management. Launched in 2013, RWM is a financial planning and asset management firm, with over $1 billion in assets. The firm offers a variety of services to the investing public, including LiftOff — a low cost online-only investment site.
In addition to running a wealth management and financial planning firm, Ritholtz is a frequent commentator on many financial topics. He was named one of the “15 Most Important Economic Journalists” in the United States, and has been called one of the 25 Most Dangerous People in Financial Media. He writes a daily column for Bloomberg View and a twice monthly column on Personal Finance and Investing for The Washington Post; He was also the author of the popular “Apprenticed Investor” columns at TheStreet.com.
One of the few strategists who saw the the coming housing implosion and derivative mess far in advance, Ritholtz issued warnings about the market collapse and recession in time for his clients and readers to seek safe harbor. Dow Jones Market Talk noted that “many market observers predict tops and bottoms, but few successfully get their timing right. Jeremy Grantham and Barry Ritholtz sit in the latter category…” (A summary of major market calls can be found here). His observations are unique in that they are the result of both quantitative data AND behavioral economics, a function of his unusual career path.
Mr. Ritholtz is a frequent commentator on economics and financial markets, and has appeared as a regular guest in most major media outlets.* He has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal’s Quite Contrary column (August 3, 2004; Page C3), and was the subject of several Barron’s interviews (December 8, 2008 and October 26, 2010). Ritholtz was honored to be the dedicatee of Stock Trader’s Almanac‘s 40th Anniversary edition in 2007 and the Yahoo Tech Ticker’s Guest of the Year in 2009.
In the Summer of 2014, Ritholtz launched a new series on Bloomberg Radio, called Masters in Business. An hour+ long deep dive into the people who drive markets and business, the radio/podcast (now on iTunes, Soundcloud, and Bloomberg) quickly becoming one of the most popular business podcasts on Apple’s iTunes. Guests have included many of the biggest names in finance: Jeff Gundlach, Howard Marks, Jack Bogle, Bill Gross, Leon Cooperman, Burton Malkiel, Bill McNabb, David Booth, Robert Shiller, Jeremy Siegel, Ed Hyman, just to name a few. The 100th episode of Masters in Business is scheduled to broadcast over the Summer of 2016.
In 2008-09, Ritholtz wrote the book Bailout Nation, published by Wiley in 2009; the updated paperback was released in 2010. Bailout Nation became the best reviewed book on the bailouts, with NYT calling it “Irreverent,” and “an important book about a complicated subject, and yet you could still read it at the beach.” WSJ noted “If you want to know how we got into this mess and what might still be coming, this is the book for you.” Bloomberg praised it as “A valuable new contribution to our understanding of how we arrived at this sorry juncture.” Bailout Nation was named “Investment Book of the Year” by Stock Trader’s Almanac, and won a First Amendment Award for Outstanding Journalism: Best Book. Numerous media — USA Today, Miami Herald, Marketplace Radio — named it as one of the best finance/business books of 2009.
Beyond his commentary and published articles, Mr. Ritholtz also authors The Big Picture — a leading financial weblog, generating several million page views per month. The Big Picture covers Investing & Trading to Macro Economics, and everything else in between. The blog has quickly amassed ~130 million visitors. Media accolades for The Big Picture have poured in: TED named TBP one of top 100 Websites You Should Know and Use; TBP was featured in the 10th annual New York Times magazine “Year in Ideas,”(DIY Economics); Numerous traffic sites rank The Big Picture as one of the most trafficked Markets/Economic’s blogs on the web.
Mr. Ritholtz performed his graduate studies at Yeshiva University’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, where he focused on Economics, Anti-Trust and Corporate Law. He was a member of the Law Review, and graduated Cum Laude with a 3.56 GPA. His undergraduate work was at Stony Brook University, where on a Regents Scholarship, he focused on Mathematics and Physics, graduating with an Bachelor Arts & Sciences degree in Political Science. He was a member of the Stony Brook Equestrian Team, and competed successfully in the National Championships (1981) of the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association. In addition to writing the National Affairs column for the campus weekly (The Stony Brook Press), he was elected Vice-President of the student body. (Ritholtz best describes it as his Bizarre Academic Career)
After passing the Bar exams in New York and New Jersey, Ritholtz practiced law for a few years, but became disenchanted with his career choice. He shifted his focus to technology and markets, has been an angel investor in early stage technology companies. He is on the Board of Advisors of Riskalyze, which creates quantitative measurements of client risk tolerances, as well as Peer Street, a private marketplace providing access to high quality real estate loan investments.
When not bemoaning the New York Knicks‘ all-too-frequent offensive lapses, Mr. Ritholtz is a vintage sports car enthusiast. He and his wife Wendy, an artist and teacher, live on the North Shore of Long Island, New York with monsters Teddy and Jackson.
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* CNBC, Bloomberg, Fox, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, MSNBC, and C/SPAN, including shows, such as Nightline, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, Fast Money, Kudlow & Co, and Power Lunch, and has guest-hosted Squawk Box on numerous occasions. He appears regularly on radio for Bloomberg, NPR, CBS, and other broadcasters. His market perspectives are quoted regularly in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, GQ, Forbes, Fortune, Smart Money, Kiplingers, and other print media. Max
