Trader Tales: Joshua Brown and Brian Portnoy’s How I Invest My Money

In an effort to give readers a behind-the-scenes look at how smart money invests, two successful stock market experts have written How I Invest My Money: Finance Experts Reveal How They Save, Spend and Invest.

Joshua Brown is the CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management, a $1.3bn firm that he co-founded in 2013, and is also the creator of The Reformed Broker blog. He has previously written two books on finance: Backstage Wall Street and Clash of the Financial Pundits.

Brown co-authoredHow I Invest My Money – which was published by Harriman House in November 2020 – with Brian Portnoy. Portnoy is the founder of Shaping Wealth, a financial wellness platform. He is also the highly acclaimed author of The Investor’s Paradox and The Geometry of Wealth. 

The idea for the book came from Brown after he noticed that many financial experts were often exclusively asked about what other people should do with their money. He wanted to share what they do with their own money and why.

The book features 25 financial experts, including Morgan Housel, Perth Tolle and Howard Lindzon, who each have a chapter where they distil how they navigate markets with their money.

“One of the [biggest] things I've learned from doing the book with Brian is that although people have similar wants and needs in life – happiness, freedom, health, wealth and recreation – we all take incredibly varied pathways to reach them” - Joshua Brown, CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management

 

For Brown, the chapters that seem to resonate with readers the most are “those in which the authors lean into their own backstories very personally and honestly”.

“One of the [biggest] things I've learned from doing the book with Brian is that although people have similar wants and needs in life – happiness, freedom, health, wealth and recreation – we all take incredibly varied pathways to reach them,” he added.  

The following is an excerpt fromHow I Invest My Money, published with permission.

 

     Introduction

I ran the numbers. I’ve been appearing on financial television for nine and a half years. During those approximately 114 months, I’ve done an average of three shows each week, which works out to something like 1,368 hours of television time talking about the stock market, the bond market, the economy and investing. And in all of that time, not one person has ever asked me about what I do with my own money. Not one.

I’ve commented on everything under the sun: Interest rates, valuation multiples, earnings calls, Federal Reserve policies, tax code changes, housing prices, credit spreads, innovation and technology, consumer confidence, trading strategies, small business ownership, macroeconomics, microeconomics, emerging markets, index funds, active management, shareholder activism, real estate investment trusts, volatility, private equity, venture capital, initial public offerings, oil and gas prices, technical analysis, value investing, momentum stocks, smart beta factors, socially responsible investing, social media, biotechnology and drug approvals, presidential elections, geopolitics, natural disasters, defense contractors, gold and silver, cryptocurrency, high frequency trading, Occupy Wall Street, insider trading, analyst upgrades and downgrades, sectors and industries, long-term investing, day trading, hedge funds, mutual funds, exchange traded funds, gaming companies, sports business, show business, startups, bankruptcies, mergers and acquisitions, and I even interviewed 50 Cent. And in all of that time, not once did someone say, “Tell us about how you invest your money.” It never happened.

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy commenting on all of these topics, because I did. But looking back on all that time, and all those words coming out of my mouth, I’m amazed that the investing I do with my own money never actually came up!

To remedy this, I wrote a post entitled “How I Invest My Own Money” at The Reformed Broker blog. It was the first time I had ever written at length about how I personally invest, and why I invest the way that I do. The post went viral across all of the social networks I shared it to.

Soon after, I got to talking with my co-author and friend Brian Portnoy about the topic and together we came to the realization that we had the makings of something truly exciting on our hands.