Barry Ritholtz - The Big Picture
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Welcome to The Big Picture! Allow me to tell you what this site is all about:
The blog is a compendium of what a professional money manager (that’s me) is looking at, thinking about, and publishing on. I write most of it (with some help from the crew). It is designed for a wide audience ranging from investment professionals to media types to anyone else interested in investing, markets, and the economy, with a healthy sprinkling of behavioral analysis and digital media thrown in for good measure. (I approach most investing issues with one foot in the behavioral camp, the other thrown in with the quants).
It is, by design, laden with facts, statistics, and informed, data-driven opinions. I avoid the squishy, touchy-feely “I think/hope/want” type of fact-free analysis so prevalent in the media and on Wall Street. This area has been my wheelhouse for ~20 years. I have been blogging on it since 2003 (earlier if you include Yahoo GeoCities).
By sheer accident, TBP has become one of highest trafficked and best reviewed finance blogs on the web. I key in on what you should be thinking about when it comes to markets and the economy — and what you should not be doing with your time and money.
The writing is designed to be very accessible — no PhD required. Hell, no college degree needed. If I can make this stuff understandable to my right brain art teacher wife and my 75 year old retired real estate agent mom, then I can help you learn the basics of markets, investing and the economy. Source
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| Scope | National |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Country | United States of America |
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Recent Articles
Search Articles10 Wednesday AM Reads
My mid-week morning reads: • It’s a Concentrated World: The top 10 stocks in the S&P 500 make up almost 40% of the index. Each of the companies in the top 10 sport a market cap of $1 trillion or more. In fact, as of this writing, the 12 biggest companies all have market caps of $1 trillion or more.1 As recently at 2015, the top 10 made up just 17% of the S&P 500. Ben Carlson on twelve of the biggest names now above $1 trillion.
Corporate vs Treasury Debt Duration
From 2008 through 2022, the 10-year Treasury yield was never above 3.25%; it spent nearly all of 2019–21 under 2%, while the 30-year bottomed at ~1% in March 2020. What an amazing opportunity to refinance debt at ultra-low rates! But not everyone is that savvy.
10 Tuesday AM Reads
My Two-for-Tuesday morning reads: • Little Tobacco Moment Meta Wins. Our “Big Tobacco moment” ended with Meta’s shareholders richer, competitors weaker, and its business model intact. We’ve been played, again. Scott Galloway on the Meta settlement — 47 states and DC, up to $17.1 billion in penalties, no admission of wrongdoing.
Transcript: Bill McNabb, Vanguard former Chairman and CEO
The transcript from this week’s, MiB: Bill McNabb, Vanguard former Chairman and CEO, is below. You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube (audio), and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here. ~~~ Masters in Business Bill McNabb, former Chairman and CEO, The Vanguard Group Host: Barry Ritholtz | Bloomberg Radio (00:00:02) Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.
10 Labor Day Reads
My long weekend morning reads: • This data has helped fight workplace discrimination for 60 years. The Trump administration plans to delete it: The move marks a fundamental shift for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Without this data, it will be much harder for the agency to identify widespread cases of discrimination in hiring and promotions, experts and former employees of the commission say.
10 Sunday Reads - The Big Picture
Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures: • I Rented a Car, and Within Hours, My Driver’s License Was for Sale: Dan Goodin on the breach unfolding in real time — his license is one of 153 million on a new dark-web site, with the FBI reportedly investigating.
MiB: Bill McNabb, Vanguard former Chairman and CEO
This week, I speak with William “Bill” McNabb. He’s the former chairman and CEO of Vanguard and now sits on the board at UnitedHealth, IBM, Axiom, and Altruist. We discuss his 30+ years at Vanguard and his career after leaving the company, working in the boardroom and with startups in fintech and more. He explains how Vanguard ran from under a trillion dollars before the financial crisis to over $13.3 trillion today. Bill also emphasizes the power of “We” versus “I” at the corporation level.
10 Weekend Reads
Three-day weekend! Pour yourself a mug of Danish Blend coffee, grab a seat outside, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads: • How to build a cancer vaccine, and whether they will work this time: Typical cancer vaccines are vaccines given to you when you have cancer. These have been worked on for forty years, and have largely failed.Typical cancer vaccines are vaccines given to you when you have cancer.
Nobody Knows Anything, Rate Expectations Edition
Heading out the door for the Labor Day weekend, with blue skies and 80° temperatures, I had to share a chart. It’s from the San Francisco Federal Reserve (via Torsten Slok of Apollo) and shows Wall Street expectations for Federal Reserve rate action. It’s the perfect explainer for why forecasts tend to be so inaccurate. As you can see, as recently as February 2026, market participants expected a series of ongoing rate hikes—a simple extrapolation from the prior trend.
10 Friday AM Reads
My end-of-week morning reads: • Job Postings Show Early Signs of AI Automation Impact: The Dallas Fed finds the automation signal starting to show up in the listings data. (Dallas Fed) • The Death of the Safe Haven: How to Fix Your Bond Strategy as Yields Rise: The rise in U.S. Treasury yields is creating opportunities—along with serious portfolio risks. (Barron’s) • The Cost of Being Warren Buffett: He turned 96 years old a few days ago, on 30th August 2026.