The Fortune Tellers: Inside Wall Street's Game of Money, Media, and Manipulation (Hardcover)

by Howard Kurtz (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
The growing accessibility of the Internet and of cable television have made financial information more available to more people than ever before. As Americans increasingly invest in the stock market, journalists who cover Wall Street have gained a celebrity status once reserved for network anchormen. As Washington Post media reporter Kurtz deftly shows in this incisive expos?, the hosts of financial shows on such networks as CNN and CNBC, as well as certain online and print reporters, can "move markets" the way only analysts were able to do in years past. This trend has led to a growing interdependence between journalists, brokers and analysts. Kurtz (Spin Cycle) makes good on his unparalleled access to many of the major players, who come across as professional and thoughtful, though they sometimes get carried away by events they can't control and often find themselves caught in conflicts of interest. Jim Cramer is one of Kurtz's prime examples: founder of the financial Web site TheStreet.com as well as the manager of a $300-million hedge fund, he frequently writes about companies whose stocks he owns. But Cramer is far from the only one on Wall Street touting companies in which he has an interest. While Kurtz concludes with the predictable observation that Wall Street is a crazy, greedy, morally ambiguous place, his first-rate analysis of the interplay between the media and American financial institutions more than justifies the point. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Kurtz is the Washington Post's media reporter and hosts CNN's Reliable Sources. His three previous books have all looked at various aspects of the way news is reported. He has offered examples of how newspapers have mishandled major stories in Media Circus (1993), lamented the proliferation of talk shows in Hot Air: All Talk, All the Time (1996), and investigated the relationship between reporters and President Clinton's press office in Spin Cycle: Inside the Clinton Propaganda Machine (1998). Now he looks at the explosive growth of financial journalism and questions the reliability of some financial information, wonders about the timing of certain news stories and releases, and raises ethical concerns about conflicts of interest. Kurtz especially sees problems when brokerage house analysts are called on as commentators. He offers up a brief history of financial news reporting, and he profiles some of the more colorful and controversial figures in the field. Much of what Kurtz exposes should serve as a warning to information-hungry investors who are often too quick to follow publicity bandwagons. David Rouse
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; 1st edition (September 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684868792
• ISBN-13: 978-0684868790
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,371,425 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fortune Tellers or Witch Oil Salesmen, September 22, 2000

By A Customer

If you want to know a stock to buy tomorrow or which way the market is going, this is not the book for you. But, if you want to know why not to trust analysts, the CNBC talking heads, or almost anyone connected to Wall Street, then this comes close to explaining it all. In my 35 years of investing, I have learned these lessons. It is all to obvious from paying attention to the market in the past few years that most people have not. Before you spend your hard earned money on that next chat room can't lose, you would be well advised to spend the $20 to buy and read this book.

41 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Too close to home, September 6, 2000

By	James J. Cramer (Summit,, New Jersey USA) - See all my reviews

Kurtz spent months in my office and he got the real story of the pressure and the pain.I think the book should be read for its insights into the way Wall Street now works, and I contrast that with the way it worked even a decade ago. It is a whole new ballgame. I wish I looked better. But then again I wish I were better. (Irony police--I am short Amazon)

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Much Ado . . . About Market Fluctuations, September 20, 2000

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

Reporting on the stock market is like giving a play-by-play report on a Mexican jumping bean. There's almost constant motion, but little of the movement has long-term consequences.

However, stock market reporting has increased the fluctuations into gyrations which make for trading opportunities that Wall Street professionals and on-line traders love. So financial coverage has been good for stock trading, brokerage houses, and those who need momentum up or down.

'Amid the endless noise, whom do you trust?' is the prescient question that Mr. Kurtz asks. Based on his descriptions of the financial journalists involved, their sources, and the checks and balances, the answer for many people will be 'no one' in the financial media.

'. . . a gust of rhetorical wind can buffet your stock like a sailboat in a hurricane.' If you are a long-term investor, this doesn't much matter. If you own index funds or their synthetic equivalents, it matters even less. Mr. Kurtz points out that mutual funds rarely beat the index funds, and that some professionals use them. On the other hand, you are unlikely to hear much about that circumstance on the television financial news reports.

Mr. Kurtz proposes reform, ' . . . it would be a significant improvement if more media outlets resisted the temptation to engage in hype and rumor-mongering in an attempt to stand out from the crowd.' On the other hand he warns that, 'Those who blindly follow them have no one to blame but themselves.'

Now you know the serious, but spare, message of this book. The rest is basically a series of detailed stories about financial media personalities like Jim Cramer, Maria Bartiromo (Money Honey), Mark Haines, Steve Lipin, David Faber, Ron Insana, Lou Dobbs, Alan Abelson, Gene Marcial, and Dan Dorfman. An occasional Wall Street analyst and strategist makes the book, as well.

I found these detailed stories to be fairly uninteresting, over-long, and filled with more trivia than substance. That's why I rated the book down one star. In particular, although I was glad that Jim Cramer was covered in the book, there is entirely too much Jim Cramer. Once you know that he has straddled too many worlds in the past (creating either conflicts of interest or the appearance of such conflicts), there is not too much more to be gained to reading about him.

I know some of the people covered in the book, and found the detail about them to be less than revealing. There is much more that could have been discussed than is contained here. The research for the book seems to have been superficial in many cases, and overly dependent on public stories rather than interviews. I was tempted to mark the book down another star, but did not. Most people new to the world of financial journalism would probably make similar errors.

After you read this book, ask yourself where else you get more information than is really needed for your purposes. Then consider how you could reduce that information flow to make it more relevant, dependable, trustworthy, and valuable. That's the ultimate challenge of the New Economy. Whom can you trust? How little time can you spend to get trustworthy information?