WSJ’s Zweig talks about covering investments

“Full Disclosure” host Roben Farzad interviewed Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Zweig about his career and Wall Street, as well as his book “The Devil’s Financial Dictionary.”

Zweig, who started in business journalism in March 1987, said his first epiphany about business journalism was shortly after arriving at Forbes after working at Time magazine.

“I realized financial journalism wasn’t just expense accounts and wasting shareholders money was when people took my story ideas and thought they were worth printing,” said Zweig. “About four years into it, editor Jim Michaels asked me to became the mutual funds editor.”

In the first few weeks into the mutual fund editor job, Zweig received more mail than he had gotten in the previous six months in journalism, said Zweig. “This was just at the beginning of the complexification of mutual funds…It was really an exciting time to be writing about that industry.”

By 1999, Zweig was now at Money magazine. He and Farzad noted that at that time, readers took investment advice from business journalists.

“One of the most challenging things about being investment writer or an investor with a long-term plan in 1999 was staying focused,” said Zweig. “I remember in January of 2000, doing a quick interview with Warren Buffett that was unrelated to the stock market as a whole.

“What he said was, ‘I know what will happen. I just don’t know when.'”

Zweig recounted the story where he wrote a glowing story of a mortgage-backed bond fund manager where he overestimated his ability, and he as a business journalist also didn’t go a good enough job of researching the fund’s investments.

“The warning signs were there,” said Zweig. “But it’s really easy to ignore them. Humans are inefficient information processors.”

To listen to the conversation, go here.