Clash of the Financial Pundits: How the Media Influences Your Investment Decisions for Better or Worse

If you have a tendency to follow pundit types and behave according to what they say then this book will be of value to you. Famous past pundits and their ultimate fates made for an interesting and fast read. If you are a skeptic by nature then this book at best only reaffirms your beliefs. The poignant tale of the author's own crash and burn underscores the fragility of pundit status.

For the novice investor, this book explains why the opinions of financial pundits should be taken with a grain of salt. There is some wisdom out there such as interviews of Chanos or Buffett, but much of the other content is filler and purely entertainment without much value (stealing from the Ritholtz interview). The book also teaches us some psychology (the advantage to stating a strong opinion verses reasoned analysis) and about incentives (the reason pundits make bold predictions).For those of us that learned to limit our news intake years ago, this book provides a deeper look at what is going on behind the scenes of punditry. While this book is completely different than Back Stage Wall Street, the common thread it does share with Josh Brown's prior book is that it gives us a look behind the scenes; in this case, we get to look behind the curtain of financial television. I thought the Finerman interview was particularly interesting to see her discuss how she learned to become a pundit and get comfortable in the role considering she had no experience with punditry before being selected for the Fast Money cast.I enjoyed the stories of Jeff Macke and Henry Blodget and how they blew themselves up and subsequently made their comebacks. In the case of Macke, I didn't see his "Car People" episode and I wondered what had happened to him. In the case of Blodget, I read Business Insider from time to time and I knew a little bit of his story of redemption but the book filled in the details of how he rose to fame in the late 1990s, what happened after his career crashed how he made his comeback.This book is really two books weaved together. Macke conducts most of the interviews with the various pundits while Brown illustrates for us how silly punditry can often be. For example, humans love simplifying complex subjects into rules (which is why half the articles on the internet start with 10 rules for ...) and Chapter 15 points out how many of these rules conflict. For example, "take your losses quickly" but "don't get scared of out a good position."My suggestion for this book is that the publisher needs to put an audiobook together. If I wasn't familiar with Josh Brown through his blog and tweets, I probably would have passed on this book due to it not being available on Audible. I think this book would be perfect for the audio format.

As a faithful reader of Josh Brown's Reformed Broker blog, I was very disappointed in the book! In the first chapter all I learned is that Jim Rogers does not own a TV set. He told us that about 5 times.The chapter on Karen Finerman was confusing nonsense. What has her introduction to the Fast Money Show have any relevance to the subject of the book? A total waste of time and paper as was Jeff Macke's melt down on TV. This was information I did not need to know. Like many financial books of 238 pages, there are about 3 chapters worth reading. They are the one's on Barry Ritholz, Martin Zweig and Joe Granville tell the story. The sentimental pap on Altucher, Cramer and Blodget make great filler for the book.The entire book can be summed up in one sentence.....if a financial pundit makes a prediction with complete confidence and conviction,run don't walk the other way!

Clash of the Financial Pundits by Josh Brown and Jeff Macke is the must read of 2014.First, there’s the amazing author combo of Brown and Macke.Brown shares his classic wit and wisdom in exploring the history of financial media the way that only the Twitter and CNBC superstar can.Yahoo! Finance’s Macke interviews a star-studded cast from which all readers can benefit. His questions are as intriguing as his subject’s answers. It is easy for the reader to tell he knows his stuff.From Jim Rogers and Ben Stein reflecting on financial media over the years to Karen Finerman and Henry Blodget discussing the current state of affairs and a wide variety of other topics, there is an amazing array of characters interviewed.Macke’s candor regarding his own trials and tribulations in the financial media, both in the brief script-flip with all-around genius James Altucher as well as the “Car People” chapter, bleeds an authenticity that readers can feel.Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book is the discussion and interview conducted by both authors with Jim Cramer.The backstory behind Cramer’s trip to The Daily Show to face a hostile crowd following the financial crisis is priceless.It is a great reminder that there are always two sides to every story.I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I am confident you will too.

Incredibly boring and long-winded recap of MackeI bought this book because I'm a huge fan of Joshua Brown - both his blog and his book Backstage Wall Street (and his hilarious Twitter jokes). Seeing the very high average rating on Amazon my expectations were pretty high. The interviews are of average quality - the best part of the book is the first 1/3 and by the time I got to the detailed recap of Macke's "devastating" on air flop which was really insignificant- except to him apparently - I couldn't believe such a long boring story made it past the editors.

First off, I like Joshua Brown’s writing along with his philosophy and I regularly visit his website (usually daily). I was expecting this book to be written by Joshua, but if there was some part of this book written by Joshua I have difficulty identifying it. As far as I can tell, this is Jeff Macke’s book. The vast bulk of the text is simply interview transcripts between Jeff Macke and various ‘pundits’. With all due respect to Jeff, I didn't buy this book (or any book) to read interview transcripts. That said, there are some excellent pieces in here written by Jeff, but at least 60% of the text is transcript.I feel like I got fooled into buying this one (I didn't buy it, I was SOLD it). Despite my views on Joshua, I will be very hesitant in buying another book with his name on it. I think this book should be priced at $3.99 based on the volume of transcript content (cough...transcript is NOT writing).