Long-time AP, Bloomberg reporter Currier dies

Chet Currier, a well-known business journalist who wrote for the Associated Press and Bloomberg News, has died at the age of 62 after battling prostate cancer, according to a Bloomberg story.

William Ahearn and Mark Schoifet wrote, “At AP, he wrote the daily stock market story that, until the explosion in coverage of financial news, was the single most-widely published business story in U.S. daily newspapers.

“After 29 years at AP, Currier joined Bloomberg in 1999, where he wrote a twice-weekly column on mutual funds and personal investing. As a columnist, he had a knack for taking contrarian positions.

“‘Buy low, sell high’ may be the least helpful piece of investment advice ever given,’ he wrote in 2006. ‘Those four little words convey no sense whatsoever of how difficult it is for most investors to put them into practice.’

“He edited AP’s weekly crossword puzzle for 20 years, creating more than 1,000 puzzles.”

Read more here. Currier received the 1999 Distinguished Achievement Award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.

After becoming the AP’s Wall Street writer in 1974, Currier started his first column, Ticker Talk, in 1976, revamped the AP’s old Weekly Wall Street fixture into a column, and then added On the Money, on broader personal finance topics, in 1979.

Currier did all of this while handling the AP’s daily stories on developments on Wall Street. He also several books, among them The Investor’s Encyclopedia, The 15-Minute Investor, Careers in the ’80s and Careers in the ’90s.