Josh Brown

Things Josh Says on Podcasts

CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management, the investment advisory firm he co-founded with Barry Ritholtz. A former stockbroker, he built a following writing about markets and the conflicts of interest in traditional brokerage on his blog, The Reformed Broker. His commentary centers on portfolio strategy, earnings and where money is actually moving, covering topics like AI capital spending, semiconductor stocks and big tech earnings rather than short-term calls. He hosts The Compound and Friends, his own podcast, and appears regularly as a co-host on CNBC's Halftime Report. He also shows up as a guest on other finance and tech shows, including Prof G Markets, Big Technology and Invest Like the Best. He has published two books on markets and financial media, Backstage Wall Street and Clash of the Financial Pundits.

Where to Find Them

Josh Brown hosts and writes The Compound and Friends , hosts Halftime Report , writes Ask The Compound and hosts The Irrelevant Investor . They have also been a guest on Closing Bell (47 times) , Prof G Markets (8 times) , RiskReversal Pod (7 times) , Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin (6 times) , Market Mondays (5 times) , The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway (4 times) , Mad Money w/ Jim Cramer (3 times) , Earn Your Leisure (3 times) , Big Technology (3 times) , The Julia La Roche Show (2 times) , Jill on Money with Jill Schlesinger (2 times) , WSJ's Take On the Week (2 times) , Slate Money (2 times) , Money Moves with Jill Schlesinger (2 times) , Invest Like the Best (Patrick O'Shaughnessy) (2 times) , Financial Advisor Success , Stansberry Investor Hour , Bogleheads On Investing Podcast , Odd Lots , This Week in Startups , The Long View , The Stacking Benjamins Show , Markets Outlook , Trillions , Boyar Research , The Pomp Podcast , Earn & Invest and RenMac .

Recently: “This Is Where the Rubber Meets the Road, with Jurrien Timmer” on The Compound and Friends (October 2026); “Sell-side Indicator (BofA) is almost on Sell, Vix is still asleep, the Bear Case revisited, FICO massacred | WAYT?” on The Compound and Friends (October 2026); “Nasdaq and Yields in Focus: The Investment Committee's Strategy 10/5/26” on Halftime Report (October 2026); “Is Gen Z Completely Cooked? With Ed Elson” on The Compound and Friends (October 2026); “Bad feeling, weak internals, confidence collapse, Nvidia breaking out | WAYT?” on The Compound and Friends (September 2026); “Sam Altman Live at OpenAI Dev Day 9/29/26” on Halftime Report (September 2026).

What They Said

“I have this heuristic where I tell people rich people don't talk to robots. Rich people pay someone else to talk to the robots and then take whatever that information is and bring it back to them.” — Josh Brown, The Compound and Friends

Jens Nordvig had just noted that clients still pay for vetted, human-filtered market information even with so much free data around. Brown answers with a rule he says holds in both the hedge fund and wealth management worlds, then extends it to travel agents and Expedia. The claim is not that the machines are bad but that paying a person to operate them is itself the status good.

The Compound and Friends · 2026-09-11 Permalink → Listen →
The Compound and Friends Around 25:56 into the episode
Josh Brown

Yeah.

Jens Nordvig

Which a couple of years ago, we thought, okay, that's. Phasing out completely. But because there's so much information out there that is not vetted at all, there's actually some that really want to pay for having something that has like an extra layer of like total real-time personal color and vetting on top.

Josh Brown

I have this heuristic where I tell people rich people don't talk to robots. Rich people pay someone else to talk to the robots and then take whatever that information is and bring it back to them. Like within reason. Wealthy people don't plan vacations on Expedia. If their travel agent is utilizing Expedia for information, that's fine. But they want a person who's responsible. And I think that corollary is a pretty good one, both for the hedge fund world and for wealth management world. You talk to the machine. Tell me what it says. Call me back. I think that's always, there's always going to be a component of that.

Jens Nordvig

And it's also a matter of making sure that the machine, even though if the machine is mathematically correct, like the machine might get outdated. So we need to continually make sure that we know what's happening in the market. Like there's a lot of our models that is based on, okay, what's the sort of market microstructure that's relevant right now, but it changes all the time.

Josh Brown

Right.

Jens Nordvig

So we can give like one, it's okay if I give a specific example. Yeah. So like Korea is a pretty interesting country now, right? Because it's probably the country where the AI revolution is impacting everything the most. Obviously in the US, AI is very important, but it's US is a bigger country, right? So in relates to the size of the country, it is an enormous boom that is happening.

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