Lou’s Lessons

Plenty has already been written today in memory of Louis Rukeyser and I’m sure there will be a lot more tomorrow. I’m going to limit my thoughts to the top three things that I learned from watching Wall $treet Week. I can’t say that the show made me want to become a financial journalist, but it definitely got me hooked on the stock market and those early lessons have guided my thinking on both finance and journalism ever since.

Lesson 1: Less is more

It’s important to note that Rukeyser’s show was called Wall $treet Week. Not “Wall $treet Screaming In Your Face All Day Long”. Thirty minutes, once a week, was all it took for Rukeyser to teach America everything we needed to know about investing from the best minds in the business. Turn off the tube sometimes and go do something else, the talking heads will still be there when you get back.

Lesson 1-a: Friday night at 8:30pm is the best time to think about your investments

Our markets are closed. The overseas markets are closed. There’s nothing to trade and it’s still too early to go out. Remember: the set didn’t look like a trading floor; it looked like a living room. Have a cocktail, think about your stocks for a bit, and then go enjoy the weekend. That’s what the wink at the end of the show was all about.

Lesson 2: All investing is global

Rukeyser never approached international investing as a newfangled concept or fad as many journalists still do to this day. Lou studied international affairs at Princeton in the 1950s and spent the early part of his career working in Europe. He always looked at the markets from a worldwide perspective and brought global investing titans such as Sir John Templeton into our living rooms.

Lesson 3: If it’s not fun, it’s not worth it

As James Grant noted in his Rukeyser obituary in today’s New York Times, “He [Rukeyser] flew first class, loved to gamble, slept in the best and gaudiest suites in the finest hotels and dressed every inch the sybarite he was.”

Earlier today CNBC played a clip of Lou’s advice after the 1987 crash that sums up the most important lesson of all: “It’s just your money, not your life.”