Short Description

What Billionaire Traders Don’t Want You To Know, Gregory Zuckerman Interview takes you behind the curtain with one of journalism’s most revered finance reporters, Gregory Zuckerman. In this episode, Zuckerman shares the psychology and secrets of billionaire traders, from why unchecked power and “yes‑men” can lead to failure, to how he manages the tension between breaking billion‑dollar stories and maintaining integrity. He also reveals an intriguing perspective on the role of AI in journalism: how, even when only 30 percent of AI’s suggestions are useful, those contributions can sharpen clarity and strengthen storytelling.

Listen as Zuckerman recounts his decade‑spanning investigative career: uncovering Wall Street scandals like the London Whale, chronicling John Paulson’s record‑breaking subprime trade (The Greatest Trade Ever), exploring the rise of quantitative investing (“The Man Who Solved the Market”), and tracing the high‑stakes race for a COVID‑19 vaccine (A Shot to Save the World). In an industry where timing matters but accuracy is paramount, he explains why thoughtful skepticism and human connection remain essential.

This episode is essential for traders and market observers who want to understand not just the how of investing strategies, but the who, and what they fear.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

In this interview, you’ll discover the hidden forces that shape elite investing and financial journalism. Gregory Zuckerman demystifies the often unseen vulnerabilities of billionaire traders— how isolation and surrounded by agreement, even the most successful investors become prone to mistakes. He offers a rare window into how high-stakes stories are researched and verified, emphasizing that accuracy must always trump urgency.

You’ll explore the surprising but growing role of AI in journalism. Zuckerman shares how AI tools—though imperfect—enhance the writing process by highlighting weak phrasing, redundant passages, and clarity issues. Learn why combining human judgment with machine insights—“man + machine”—remains the most powerful tool in storytelling and reporting.

Drawing on scoops from John Paulson’s subprime trade to Jim Simons’s quant revolution and the COVID‑19 vaccine saga, he demonstrates how curiosity, persistence, and access to sources underpin the most impactful stories. Whether you're a retail trader seeking competitive edges or an aspiring journalist, this episode delivers actionable insights into strategy, ethics, and the evolving dynamics between humans and technology in finance.

Jonathan Farrelly – Host

Jonathan began his trading journey over 15 years ago, learning from top institutional traders. Over the last nine years, he has educated thousands of retail traders on how to navigate markets effectively. Jonathan's ethos centers on transparency, with the goal of helping both new and experienced traders succeed.

About Gregory Zuckerman

Gregory S. Zuckerman is a Special Writer at The Wall Street Journal with more than 25 years of experience covering finance, energy, biotechnology, and investing. A three-time Gerald Loeb Award winner, he is the author of acclaimed books including The Greatest Trade Ever, The Frackers, The Man Who Solved the Market, A Shot to Save the World, and two inspiring titles for young readers co-authored with his sons, Rising Above and Rising Above: Inspiring Women in Sports

There's one guy in particular I won't say his name, but he's just one biggest names in who call me up. Why didn't you call me in the story? Well, it's billionaire. You could afford islands. I don't know why he cares that he's not mentioned or mentioned in a story. And yet they do care. So you're like you and I.

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Two Blokes Trading. Today, I'm honored to be joined by Gregory Zuckerman. He's the journalist that the world's most secretive traders trust. Gregory has spent over 25 years at the Wall Street Journal, breaking billion dollar stories from the London Whale to the fall of Bill GROSS, his best selling author who revealed John Paulson's 15 billion housing bet, Jim Simon's ¥100 billion empire and chronicled the race for a COVID vaccine.

I traded a little bit on my own and lost whatever money I had. I'm really glad I didn't stick with that career. How much is A.I. actually transforming journalism? I don't agree with 70% of what what it comes back with, But 30% of the time, it really helps me a lot. You look back on it, it is amazing how many people on top of the world just topple and make a mistake.

You become a billionaire. You only have yes men and women around you and no one to question you, no one to challenge you. That's always what brings people down. How did you get these guys to open up and share their stories with you? My goal is to find a reason why people should want to talk to me. There's someone right now for a book of mine who won't talk to me.

He's the most famous investor in the world. Greg's work is studied by traders worldwide, and today he's taking us inside the minds of finance, his most powerful players. Gregory, thanks for joining us here today on Two Blokes Trading podcast. It's a it's a real honor and special to have you on our podcast today. So thank you for taking the time.

Great to be here. Awesome. So obviously you've got a really awesome background. Like I've done a lot of deep research on what you've done and I didn't know where to start with this interview. I'll be honest. So you obviously fell into journalism. You've got an economics degree. I think you want to be a banker, maybe, But how did how did you manage to get into journalism?

So I stumbled into it. I wanted to go work on Wall Street and neglected to spend any time in finance in college, university. I worked in camps. I like kids. I like sports. But I did pretty well in school and figured, alright, I'll just head to Wall Street and get a job and I couldn't even get an interview.

It was a bad time on the street. It was a couple of years after the 1987 crash. They weren't really hiring, especially people with no connections and no background in finance. I read a lot about Wall Street and I loved and I traded a little bit on my own and lost whatever money I had had some bar mitzvah money very little, and I blew it all trading.

But I loved this thing. So I got to Wall Street, couldn't get a job. I stumbled around for a few years, tried some businesses, I started some businesses and some were mildly successful. The others outright failures and needed a job. And then I saw an advertisement. Back then in newspapers, they had advertisements for positions, and it was to be a journalist, to be a financial journalist.

And I and I took a test because I didn't have any clips. As they say. I had no experience in journalism. I just loved journalism. I read a lot. I loved newspapers. I was obsessive newspaper reader and books and such. And I went in there and I took this test, and I did well on the test, not because of my writing.

I thought it was because I did a pretty good job on this writing test, but it was because I was good on the phone talking to the source. The source was my potential editor. So I kind of stumbled into this thing and I remember taking that test saying, Well, they'll pay me to write about Wall Street and finance and trading.

How much fun would that be as a career? So I'm grateful. I just sort of fell onto us. It's funny because I know a lot of analysts that don't actually trade themselves at all but have such a loving, like passion for the markets that they just love writing about it. And it's quite strange to me that somebody wouldn't trade, but yet loves the market so much and sometimes that can be from previous experiences, or sometimes it's just like their risk exposure and other things can kind of get in the way.

Are you still currently trading yourself? Well, I'm that's the Wall Street Journal since 1996, and we're very limited in that regard. So I don't really trade. But I do have to say I've an awful temperament to be a trader. So I'm really glad I didn't stick with that career. That side of things. You have to be somebody, as I'm sure you know, somebody who can kind of leave it at the office, as it were, not bring it home with you.

So I'm more of a writer. I've got anxiety and angst and neuroses, obsessions, and yeah, it's hard for me to leave stuff at the office. I literally bring my work home with me. So it would think it worked out for the best. Yeah, but you can't see in front of me. But we've got padded walls here in the office.

Yeah, go ahead and tell me like this. Nearly three decades in at working in financial journalism, That's an incredible career within that. I mean, has it changed a lot since you first walked in the door? It's funny. It's changed a lot, and yet it hasn't changed, meaning that the technology obviously so much faster. I'll never forget it. I remember this is years ago already at this point where I filed a story on my computer and I had CNBC right next to me back then in my little cubicle.

And then it went from my, my, my, my, my keyboard to my editor sent out there. And then CNBC was talking about it minutes later. Just technology. Dare to think about how fast these things move. And we have in some ways more competition. We've got everybody online and our traditional competitors and such and things are faster than ever and we isolate for a newspaper and now we don't even think really in terms of the newspaper.

It's just continually getting it out there and sharing it with readers. That said, most of my best stories are still developed the same kind of way. Someone gives you a call, you hear something over lunch, someone? Yeah. Meeting people still is more valuable than ever, more than ever. It's a skill that a lot of younger people don't really cultivate, but we emphasize and I encourage and I'm just getting into the office and talking to people.

So things have changed in a lot of ways too. I think the next generation are losing that capacity to, you know, that face to face capacity, and I think that's a dying art. But it definitely needs to stay with our next generation coming through for sure. So, yeah, I agree. You've obviously broken some market moving stories. I mean, how do you weigh timing versus verification when billions could potentially swing?

It's a tough question. I remember I was working on this is years ago, the London Whale, and if you recall that. But Jp morgan had a trader who had put on a lot of risk for them and was losing money and the bank was jeopardizing the banks. Well, I mean, not banks health, but billions of dollars were at risk.

And I knew there was competition. I knew Bloomberg was right and something you had to get it right. You want to be the first one out there. You have to weigh these things. And at the end of the day, first and foremost, I don't mind getting beat. I want to make sure everything we write is is accurate. We have to we emphasize that the journal in my book writing as well.

So accuracy is its foremost priority. I've seen too many examples, people just putting stories out, maybe a little bit too prematurely and it costs you and you want to make any mistake you can jeopardize. You could raise questions about the story you write as a journalist just by a misspell, and I'm going to ask our thank God for spellcheck.

But you'll be surprised because when I read a story and I see a grammar mistake, kind of raises a question on the entire thesis. So we want to get it right first and foremost. But if we can beat the competitors, that'd be great too. Sure. And with I want to touch upon a bit later in the podcast. But how much is within journalism?

How much is A.I. actually transforming journalism? It's fascinating because in an hour or for 5 minutes, we have a luncheon about A.I., and we've been emphasizing a lot and both the risks and the challenges and also the opportunities in a lot of ways, again, transforming things. I use it a lot now, more my book writing than it than with my reporting.

I use it to critique my writing and I will cut and paste and ask a bit to critique it. And I don't agree with often a 70% of what what it comes back with a lot of clichéd kind of stuff and bad writing, but 30% of the time it finds some something I did, I repeated something, a word choice or a theme that was unnecessary within that section.

Or maybe it's not as clear as I think it is. It's been really helpful. It slows me down, but it really helps me a lot. I mean, such a beauty is unbelievable in that regard. And within seconds I can critique a whole section of writing. But you know what? Which actually does is look, look, the back, the backwards.

And what we try to do is journalists break news and tell you something you don't know and you catch a beat. You can't tell you the kind of things that Greg Zuckerman hears over our lunch, over a drink, or somebody call me up or I call somebody. And in the middle of a conversation, he or she mentions something in passing thing.

So in some ways we're protected a little bit in that regard relative to some other careers and professions. Sure. I mean, it's about utilizing it in the right ways and not misusing it. Right? That's yeah, but there's a balance. And like I said, 30 years in the industry, I mean, it's a long time. I mean, do you ever get old?

Yes. No, you don't look old and you've got all your teenage kids right on this. I've got an 18 year old now as well. Again, I know, but. But how do you not get bored of what you're doing? Is it just like you're constantly getting new stories? Do you get excited by the next new story? You know, what keeps you going as a journalist?

Yeah, maybe I should be more bored than I am. I'm very lucky because I have a position at the Wall Street Journal where I can roam a little bit and I go where the action is. So I don't know. Few years ago it was biotech and the development of the COVID vaccines and the companies doing it. And the great thing about finance, and I'm sure you and your viewers and listeners will appreciate the beauty of finance is it involves every industry.

So something important is going on in telecom world or bankruptcies or something. I've got an investor, I can find an investor that's in the middle of it. And along the way I learned. So I knew nothing about biotech and vaccine. I mean, a little bit about vaccine development by threw myself into it. And there's always and I ended up writing a book about that issue and the history, the fascinating history of these people.

So what's the name of that book that's called The Shot to Save the World? And I'm proud of that because it was our book to write. But it to me that was fast. The scientists and the researchers and entrepreneurs who developed these vaccines for years. M RNA technology and it's an interesting history. I was able to I was I was grateful that I was able to talk to so many of them.

And there some interesting lessons there. But everything involves an investor. At some point, the capital behind every innovation and revolution out there. So fracking and the energy revolution. Few years ago I was like, Wait, where we in America are producing? So much oil and gas, How the heck did that happen? And again, I didn't really know anything about that industry.

So I like I'm a curious person to the point where it can be annoying to to live with me and be married to me. Trust me, I'm sort of notorious. You put me down at a at a barbecue or a dinner party or a bar mitzvah or something, and I'll talk to the person next to me and find some really interesting story.

And I find everybody has a great life story. I really I'm really a big believer in that. And it's my job as a journalist to find that. In other words, they've overcome something that has been some challenge, something some lesson that and I'm a I'm relatively selfish person, so I don't I do this to learn from people and from these industries.

So that's why I don't get bored, because there's always something like right now I'm writing about crypto a little bit in the people and, and I find that there's the characters, but also I'm learning along the way. So when I get bored, I move on to some new industry. It's like emotional intelligence, right? We're it constantly trying to pull information from people that are doing different things to build that intelligence and build that information.

And that, I guess as a journalist is absolutely key. But I mean, you've had a lot of scoops, right? Is there one particular scoop that you're extra proud of out of all of them? Tom London Well, I'm very proud of early on right away, JPMorgan. Jamie Dimon dismissed my reporting and called it tempest in a teapot. And you can't really it's not possible.

And they ended up he called me up literally to apologize at one point. And I was so furious the way he was dismissive of me, I didn't want to take his calls really so upset. So that was a good one. Early on, when I was even before the Journal in 1996, I broke a story about Michael Eisner and Michael Ovitz, who were running Disney and how they were fighting.

And Disney called me up and said, Greg, you've ruined your career. It's not true. So inaccurate, no one's going to want to hire you after the Post. It ruined your reputation. And thankfully and that was that was nerve wracking. But thankfully my reporting was borne out. Those two split up and now I wrote with a colleague of mine, we wrote early stories about the big investment firm PIMCO and the fighting going on there.

I do a lot of writing about writing about people, the tension on Wall Street, the age old topic of interest. So Bill GROSS and Mohamed El-Erian, behind the scenes we're really having difficulty in. We wrote story after story after story about just what was going on behind the scenes. And it was a shocker to us when there's a story that when something arises that that shocks me.

I'm like, wow, that must be it's it's a shock to me. That's probably going to be interesting story for the reader, I think. Or so those are, I guess, among those that I'm proud of. And there's a fine line within being really successful and it all falling apart in such small things, right? Because you're dealing with really powerful people that can really turn a screw on even if they want to, you know?

Well, you hit at something that I've found in my career that, you know, you look back on it, it is amazing how many people on top of the world just topple and make a mistake, be it personally make some decision that brings them down or often is the case. They just get too big as investors. I mean, I wrote a book about John Paulson.

I wrote stories about him and his subprime trade. And just got too big and took on too much. And I see it over and over again. You get you got you become a billionaire. You only have yes. Men and women around you and no one to question, you know, and to challenge you. And you figure I can take on more a room.

And that's always brings people down, just taking on too much money. And that's the beauty of Jim Simons, This investor that I wrote about in another book, and in that they kept their fund relatively small and I admire that I could have taken on billions and billions and billions of women didn't so that often is what leads to people's reputations crumbling as investors.

They just underperform and make mistakes. Sure, I'd say there's been some memorable experiences like, you know, do you have any funny stories, surprising moments, encounters that kind of stick with you? Funny moments, Yeah. I mean. Oh, that's a good question. I should have thought about that. I mean, over and over again, I've got people who insult me that I get it.

I'm amused at this point. So Jeff Gundlach, who's a big investor, bond investor, one of the biggest right now on Wall Street, I, I wrote a story. It was so benign, innocuous about how he had been doing really well and now not doing as well. I was just the numbers were the numbers and women had plateaued, flattened out.

And he went on a conference call with his investors, his clients, thousands of clients. And he referred to the story and he said the story written by that mother Zacher. My name is Zuckerman. He called me Mother Zucker. And then I got an email after I wrote a book about the energy revolution. And this guy, Harold Hamm, is a key character.

And he sent me an email. Mr. Zuckerman Which is I find when they get poor jokes. Yeah, I don't know. I kind of find that amusing. And obviously, look, you've interviewed like billionaires. That's what you do write finance legends. How do you get these guys to open up and share their stories with you? Obviously, it's a it's a balance between how much information these guys will actually give, but how do you get them to open up?

And generally speaking, I collect compromising photos and I just kind of know I listen, I'm at the Wall Street Journal, so I'm privileged. I don't know if they would talk to me if I wasn't here, but it's a great brand. It's, I believe, the most accurate publication out there. And I think a lot I mean, there's always my goal is to find a reason why people should want to talk to me.

I mean, there's someone right now for a book of mine who won't talk to me. He's the most famous investor in the world, but I think eventually he will come around. My I'm not begging anyone. I'm not asking. They should want to talk to me just to make sure what I'm writing is accurate, to to to have their side of whatever it is shared with the world, with Eventually they not always eventually they come around.

And I suppose there was one big thing about hedge funds or billionaires that, you know, that's true, but maybe many traders wouldn't believe that that could ever be true. Is there like is there any particular thing that you find with these guys that just give them the edge? It makes them slightly different or they're insecure more than you would think.

So about saying that that's not understood. They're insecure. There's one guy in particular, I won't say his name, but he's just one biggest names and he's got the best kind of best track track records and he'll call me up. Why don't you include me in the story? Well, I. It was really relevant to you. Yeah, but I have a better record than that.

And, you know, this guy can. He's billionaire. He could afford islands. I don't know why he cares that he's not mentioned or mentioned in a story, and yet they do care. It's so you're like you're not. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The funniest things also it is happening as much anymore. Well, I used to cover the hedge fund business per se, and that we would get criticism.

I would get criticism. Why are you so negative going? So negative about the industry. You always write negative to stories more often than I came from people in the industry. They would call up and say, Hey, did you hear this? Do you see that? Blah blah? And then they say, Well, why so, Nick, what? You guys are feeding me these stories?

So yeah, on the flip side of that though, do you think there's something that has made them successful like that? Successful? Like what is there is there a trait that you see by standing in front of these talking to these guys? Is there anything different in terms of like maybe where they've got to, how they've got their I know you're looking for I'll give you I'll come back to it.

But my cynical response is they present really well they present really well, so there's not much else out there. So, you know, you're catching a jaded journalist in the latter part of his career, I suppose, And nepotism, you know, I don't know. That's what's nepotism. But it is sad to me how much a room that alternative managers manage because so many of them underperform and as a result are pension funds, insurance companies, charities are squandering money.

Now, listen, the best of the best. Blow you away or blow me away with their intellect and their and their diligence. And they they're hard working. And I'll give one example. David Tepper. David Tepper. When I talk to him, I feel dumb. And there are very few people, not that I'm so smart, but the very people that I feel dumb around when I converse with them.

He's like, Greg, did you saw what they said? A language in their statement? No, no, I missed that. So the best of and he has one of the best records and so the best of them a blow you away a gloomy way with their intellect and their passion for this thing, for investing and their work ethic. Yep. Super smart.

And they think outside the box. I think it is two steps ahead. So I couldn't do I'm going to pretend I couldn't do what they do or you do. I'm not as good. I'm really I'm really good at telling you how something happens. I'm not good at telling you what's going to happen. People sometimes I give speeches and sides and they're like, What?

What's the next big trend? And I'd throw something out there, but I'm not good at that. And you got to know what your competitive advantage is. So I can I'm really good at synthesizing complex themes and making it simplifying it for people and especially for the regular readers. And I'm proud that I didn't grow up a math and science person.

My late father would be so amused that my books are offered math and science, and those are the subjects I had such tough time with. But I did. I have learned that you can you can learn all this stuff. You find the teachers and and you put enough work into it and you spend time. I mean, I wrote a book about the vaccine development.

I didn't even want to sell. I did go back to biology and relearn all this stuff. But you can you really can learn about that stuff. But some of these people are just taking a few steps ahead and where things are going to go in the world as Dan Druckenmiller kind of people. And again, David Tepper I have all kinds of respect for that job.

I mean, we touched on it earlier on, but I mean, you are releasing market moving stories potentially and that's one thing that, you know, you know what that's going to happen to that market before it's going to happen potentially by writing something. Right. There must be quite hard and you have to be pretty, I suppose. What's the word?

I mean, to not want to feel like, oh, I could actually benefit from from this, you know, you have to stick to very strict kind of an idea. And I look, you 30 years in the industry, you know, it must be tempting at some stage. Yeah that was relevant. I used to ride the herd on the street column which is one of our trademark columns, high profile ones.

And back then especially, we would write I would write about specific stocks and you would think it would move the stock some that often it did. And right there was the potential. But, you know, risk and reward. I mean, my reputation is all I have, all I have. And you'd be surprised. It's a small world full of finance, I guess maybe an hour in general.

And I don't know. I'm always amazed and stunned by people who act poorly on the way out the door of a job, let's say, or just interact with each other on a day to day basis and in a poor way. And I don't I don't I don't do it for that reason. But my reputation is all I have so I could screw a source or someone easily on a story and it would be a great and it would help the story.

And that, too, is I don't I sort of look myself in the mirror. I also want to be able to sleep at night and treat people properly. But yeah, my reputation is all I have. So if I did insider trading, which would be illegal, I would never do it. But it's just not worth it. And let's say even I knew I was going to get away with that.

You're right. I don't. Your reputation is all you have in life. So I try to keep that money and then it gets back to the earlier point. And you hinted at it, too. How many people just kind of blow it like they're on top of the world, They've got all the money in the world and they just push the envelope and mistreat someone or take advantage and just not worth it.

Unfortunately, this industry is there, especially for the retail trader. It's it's there. So I'm protected with what is put in front of them. Everybody wants to sell this story of get rich quick, make money here, do that. Do it this way. That's one of the reasons why I stick to this podcast and try to give our listeners some kind of encouragement that, Look, guys, this is something that you can definitely make money from.

It's definitely it's a it's a skill that you have to learn like any other skill and like that. You know, I have to go home. I would have family look my kids in the eyes. I want to stick to that. And my reputation is is absolutely that. And in the same way, I suppose that you have to protect yours.

But going back to some of your stories, obviously, you've done quite a lot throughout your career, one being the man who solved the market. And that's about Jim Simmons, right. And how he launched the Quiet Revolution. Like, how do you foresee II further revolutionizing the trading space going forward? Is that something that I know you know, a lot about it.

You wrote a book about it, so I'd love to pick your brains on it. Yeah, it's fascinating. I did a story two or three years ago with the Source for the Journal, with the theme being that A.I. is everywhere. We're all embracing it. And yet, when it comes to investing, we're not yet at the point where we can turn the decisions over to the machines.

And you referenced So, Jim, Jim Simons and his firm, Renaissance Technologies, you're the greatest hedge funds ever. They're the greatest investment firm ever. And just this fund that they ran, medallion, they still run my books about the evolution of that firm. And he was doing predictive algorithms and machine learning and AI in the 1980s before any of this was in the news and in focus.

And yet they are mostly man plus machine or machine plus man. I think they call it meaning they do turn them decisions over often to the machine that the machine really runs things on their own. It's but it's programed. The algorithms are developed with humans and there are times when they make decisions where their system makes its trading decisions on its own and they don't know why, but they do go back and try to figure it out.

These non-intuitive signals, as they call them. So there's a balance still on Wall Street. That said, I'm now currently working on trying to figure out where things are and whether we're at a point where it's going to be only machine and I can really run the show. And you would think at some point that's possible. Now, the counter argument is that markets are always evolving.

There's new and unusual styles Trump and tariffs that the quants today renaissance is having a tough couple of months getting crushed, but they're underperforming and people are saying, well, it's because of the tariffs and it's unusual and all that kind of stuff. There's always unusual stuff. So it's not yet we're not yet at the point where we can turn it all over the machine, but we might get there.

Sure. That definitely oversight is needed. I mean, look at BlackRock even. I mean, there's huge, you know, really push towards AI and so on. Like for me, like we're actually building tools at the moment we spent about 12 months trying to build is a tool that will just give sentiment technical and so on, just like a short overview for people like how to testing what trade is.

I believe nowadays, especially retail traders, is access to information fast and that's what their institutions have and that's what's key to that decision making processes, right? So try to build that into to the retail space I think is absolutely key for guys as well. Perfect. So tell me, what's the biggest challenge, do you think, actually implementing AI into the trading world will be from your research, from your understanding throughout that book?

I mean, is there one particular I know you say human oversight? Stephanie, The biggest challenge because that's still needed, right? But is there any other challenges you see? Well, you would think it's about predicting the future. And AI is really good at developing patterns based on the past and the future doesn't always model and follow past patterns. That said, you know, Renaissance technologies and.

Jim Simons That's what they kind of did. That was their assumption that patterns do repeat. So I should get there. I think eventually. But there's also just the inefficiency or the efficiency of the market and can is are there enough inefficiencies out there? I'm a big believer. I mean, my one takeaway of writing about all this is that you as an investor can find some competitive advantage, but it's like niche kind of stuff on health care, let's say you focus on this health care and new products and such or some other area.

It's really just hard to go up against the big behemoths and especially with technology being so important and data as you suggest. But there are corners of the market where you can't compete. I think, you know, it's all about how I can get that information, how quick it gets information, how quick it can turn that information into decision making.

Right. Because it's like it already knows, okay, if Fed cuts rates, if NFP comes in higher, if you know, it's a waiting these expectations and, you know, there's many different kind of multiples of things that can happen within the markets for for any decision to happen or for markets to move in a particular direction. But really the air is is faster at consuming that information and spit in the back out than we could ever be.

Right. And yes, I'm a big believer in systems. And if you look at all kinds of industries, they're not winging it. They're not just sort of using intuition and judgment. I don't care what it is. Pilots before they fly, they've got a checklist that they go through. That's a system. That's an approach surgeons as well. And yet politicians are still kind of winging it.

Even the Federal Reserve to some extent. And to me, that just doesn't seem to the smartest approach. Man plus machine, meaning some systematic approach and algorithms are helpful, as you suggest, because they're preprogramed and they take out some to some extent they combat the behavioral decision mistakes that we all make, the greed, the fear, the panic. I was struck by even Jim Simons later in my research with him, he was telling me about how the market went down one day.

This is after he had already retired and he called up his financial advisor to say, Should we be buying shorts here? And I was like, Jim, you are the preeminent quant you don't believe in just sort of you take advantage of people that call up their brokers in a panic. He really appreciate the irony there, but it just shows there is a temptation.

We all have to just sort of use our intuition and judgment. And to the extent you can avoid that by relying on some even pre developed system, I do think you have an advantage. I certainly think intuition. Now. I think that's something that's built up over years as a trader, and I think that's something that you just can't plug in, right?

It's just that capacity to understand sentiment. And I think once I can consume that and understand sentiment in the same way that we can consume it, I think that's when the switch may, you know, we might see that switch. But I mean, for me, I can't I wouldn't be able to let an AI trade for me. Like for me it's more about, okay, give me the information really quick.

Allow me to make that decision with that information, you know, and that is I already have a bias utilized in A.I. to help my bias. And you know, I like that common plus machine. That's good. Yeah. There you go. And tell me, I suppose we've got a wide audience. You know, you have one piece of advice that you give to traders coming through, investors coming through that you know, you think that would help them.

It's hard to beat this market, man. It's it's a pretty efficient market. Find some niche, find some corner and don't try to go up against the the Renaissance technologies of the world meaning that they are often they are short term oriented. The multi-strategy firms that dominate nowadays are very quarter by quarter. They look at the earnings, they're trying to anticipate what individual companies are going to report.

Don't get into that game. You're going up against these guys and there's really not that much alpha there. Maybe it means being a little bit longer term investor. It's the guys like Jim Simons and the quants are holding it, they call it minutes or moments, two months, that kind of thing, you know, short term oriented. Maybe it's better to try to take advantage of the short term volatility by being a little bit more longer term oriented.

But listen, if I knew the secrets of trading, my friend, I'd be doing it and quitting. And on an island. But instead I get to write about those who know more than I do about this stuff. Absolutely. I think it's about just finding your niche, right? Yeah. Like them? Yeah. So finally, I suppose, what's next for you? You know?

Do you have any projects on the go, any books? What's on the horizon for you? What we going to watch out for? I'm writing a book right now, which I'm very excited about. I'm really enjoying the process. It's more historic. It's about sort of Wall Street's greatest hits, as it were, some of the greatest trades of all time investments deals.

And so I've written a whole section about 1987 and the crash and all the drama behind the scenes. People like Soros and Druckenmiller, Paul Tudor Jones, people that should have were set up really well, couldn't pull it off. I personally have a real passion for writing about individuals who never quite made it but should have. They were just as smart, they were just as prepared.

They had the same trades, sat somehow they couldn't pull it off and a lot of life is is good luck and fortune. I, I find it health or otherwise. So anyway, I'm writing about 87 and there's a lot of drama that week that has been reported. And Soros panicked and sold and dumped and yet figure out a way to turn it around and and admire people that can can blow it and yet don't beat themselves up and have the capacity to to to rebound.

And so I'm writing all about that I'm writing about in that same book, I'm writing about some historic trades by Buffett and Munger. And so I've had a chance to talk to Charlie Munger before he passed away, which was really wonderful pleasure. And and I'm grateful for that. So and there's a lot of cool stuff there behind the scenes and how they deliberated over investments and figure things out and how they decided on some and didn't and the people around them and how they influence them and who they listen to, what they didn't listen to.

So that's a lot of what I'm writing about. On the other side from the Wall Street Journal right now. Awesome. Awesome. We've just moved office and I'm going to build a library and and definitely your your books have gone up there first and I can't wait to get my teeth into them and have a read where but also put a links in all of our socials and things as well.

So make sure to check them out. Guys, Thank you, Gregory, for coming on today. Like I said, it's a real honor to get someone like yourself on a podcast. So thank you so much. Again, there's a lot of fun. And if your viewers and listeners want to reach out, I'm easy to find on Twitter and LinkedIn and all that kind of stuff.

The email. So if they have any questions or critiques, that's fine too. Awesome. Brilliant stuff. Greg, thank you so much again. Okay, Cheers. Bye, guys.