About

My Background: I’m the Director of Institutional Asset Management at Ritholtz Wealth Management. We create detailed investment plans and manage portfolios for institutions and individuals to help them achieve their goals.

I’ve been managing institutional portfolios for my entire career. I started out with an institutional investment consulting firm developing portfolio strategies and creating investment plans for various foundations, endowments, pensions, hospitals, insurance companies and high net worth individuals. More recently, I was part of the portfolio management team for an investment office that managed a large endowment fund for a charitable organization.

I’m the author of four books about saving, investing and money.

In 2017, I was named to the Investment News 40 Under 40 list of top financial advisors.

Every Wednesday, you can listen to a new episode of my podcast Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. Fortune named Animal Spirits to its list of Best Business Podcasts. Investopedia named Animal Spirits to its top 10 investing podcast list.

About A Wealth of Common Sense: Albert Einstein once said, “If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.” The main reason I started this website is to try to explain the complexities of the various aspects of finance in a way that everyone could understand them. Both the economy and the financial markets are complex adaptive systems, but I’ve never found complex problems require complex solutions. Common sense and self-awareness are extremely underrated attributes in the world of finance.

Less is more is one of my guiding principles. Perspective and understanding can get you much further than tactics or textbook knowledge. I’ve always found that the most intelligent people I’ve learned from over the years are able to simplify to make any topic more understandable and put difficult concepts into common sense language. That’s always been my goal here as well.

One of the biggest unanticipated benefits of starting this blog is the fact that I’ve learned so much through the writing process, not only from my own research but also through feedback from readers. Please feel free to reach out with any comments or questions.

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I’ve been featured or quoted in a number of different publications and media outlets. Get in touch if you’d like a comment. Here are some of my past media mentions: