STOP BEING YOUR OWN WORST ENEMY

A veteran money manager shares common investing errors and how to avoid them.

- INSIDER INTERVIEW BY ANNE KATES SMITH

BARRY Ritholtz is the chairman and chief investment officer of Ritholtz Wealth Management, creator of The Big Picture blog and host of the Masters in Business podcast. His new book is How Not to Invest: The Ideas, Numbers, and Behaviors that Destroy Wealth—and How to Avoid Them (Harriman House, 2025).

KIPLINGER: In your book you list a host of sources of bad ideas, including experts, forecasters, Wall Street strategists, analysts and the media. What should investors watch out for?

RITHOLTZ: It all comes back to the advice your mom gave you: Don’t take candy from strangers. You don’t know who they are, what their motivation is or what’s in the candy. Who’s the stranger on TV telling you what to do with your money? And it’s not just the media, it’s pundits, fund managers, forecasters—everybody is selling something. None of them know who you are, what your tax bracket is, how much money you've saved. If they don’t know any of those things about you, why would you imagine their advice is good for you? It fits everybody, therefore it fits nobody. There’s a firehose of nonsense out there, especially on algorithmic social media. Why would you take candy from those strangers?

You note that some of the ways numbers are used in the investing world can be misleading.