Barry L. Ritholtz 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. He also writes a twice monthly column on Personal Finance for The Washington Post.
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 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.
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. He is also an investor in StockTwits, a Twitter based stock community.
