At The Money: How to Manage Your News & Data Flow

This episode of At The Money was recorded in July, before President Trump fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer. So please note that this conversation was had before that departure. We live in an age of endless news and spin.  We rely on data and news releases, but it's really easy to get tripped up by all of it. How should investors manage this firehose of numbers? Michael Hiltzik covers business for the Los Angeles Times, is a two-time winner of the Gerald Loeb Award and has authored numerous books on business. Each week, “At the Money” discusses an important topic in money management. From portfolio construction to taxes and cutting down on fees, join Barry Ritholtz to learn the best ways to put your money to work. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  At KKR, we've spent 50 years understanding what matters to our clients and companies. From pioneering private equity to investing across credit, real assets, insurance and sports, KKR has built the experience to navigate complexity, the judgment to recognize opportunity, and the conviction to create lasting value. Because when people and institutions are counting on us, understanding what matters isn't just important, it's everything. KKR, understanding what matters. Visit kkr.com/whatmatters.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  This is the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. I'm Carol Muster. Getting hired at SpaceX requires exceptional ability and may include having Elon Musk review a candidate's resume. So writes Bloomberg Business Week's Lauren Grush. She reports that the company culture is defined by Musk and job candidates must understand that a commitment to SpaceX means adhering to this culture and exhibiting loyalty to Elon Musk. To get hired, candidates must demonstrate their achievements from past jobs, and hands-on experience matters more to recruiters than advanced degrees, with the company looking for people with raw, innate intelligence. A spokesperson for SpaceX didn't respond to a request for comment on its recruiting

• 1:13Speaker 01

  and hiring practices, but according to recruiters, advisors and those who've interviewed for jobs there, it's the space exploration dream that draws people to the company, and Musk invokes that dream regularly to remind workers why they're there. Prospective hires are told that the job will require stamina, including in job ads that candidates, quote, "must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed." One major perk for all that hard work? Employees' access to equity, either the right to buy shares or payment in the form of restricted stock units that vest over time. That's the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. Get started at ChatGPT.com.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  The world of business is constantly evolving and Comcast business keeps you totally in step with secure AI-backed networking in more than 100 countries. They're powering over 90% of the Fortune 500 and millions of small businesses. That's a lot of muscle. And behind it all, thousands of experts answering your call at 2:00 AM like it's 2:00 PM. One partner powering how business gets done for companies around the globe. When you add it all up, no one does business like Comcast business.

• 2:23Barry Ritholtz?

  The following episode of At the Money was recorded July 2025. This was before President Trump fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erica McIntarfer. Please note, the conversation was recorded before that departure.

• 2:58Barry Ritholtz?

  Wall Street relies on data, economic releases, quarterly earnings, performance comparisons, but it's really easy to get tripped up by all of this math. How should investors manage this fire hose of numbers? To help us navigate this, let's bring in Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Michael Hiltzik. He covers business for the Los Angeles Times. He's a two-time winner of the Gerald Loeb Award and has authored numerous books on business. So, Michael, let's just start with the basics. How do you manage this endless torrent of data that comes our way?

• 3:37Speaker 04

  That's a good question. Mostly, I try to ignore most of it and I curate what I use and what I rely on. And basically, the way I work is I start with a topic that I want to explore, a subject I want to explore, and then I go search out the data that I need. That way, I'm not affected. I mean, there are some sources that, you know, come across my emails regularly that I will pay some attention to.

• 4:09Speaker 04

  But most of it, I don't, and I know where to go most of the time for what I need.

• 4:15Barry Ritholtz?

  So let's talk about that. If you're going to be writing about or researching a particular subject, what sources of economic data do you rely on? And what sources do you find troublesome and best ignored?

• 4:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, I think if I'm writing about, you know, something that touches on macroeconomics or domestic economics, I think you can't do better than the BLS, Bureau of Labor Statistics, or the Bureau of Economic Analysis. And thus far, they haven't been undermined, maybe a little bit, but not too much by Trump. So their data are really still reliable. And I also go to Fred. That's the service from the St. Louis Fed that can reduce a lot of this, the data from BLS and BEA to graphical form. And I've published Fred charts, you

• 5:15Speaker 04

  know, if there's a month that passes without it, that's rare. So I rely on those.

• 5:21Barry Ritholtz?

  How do you assess the credibility and accuracy of any source? Obviously, BLS, BEA, Fred have a very long track record. But what factors do you consider when you're looking at a source of economic data?

• 5:38Speaker 04

  Well, I look at these sources the way I look at any sources. You know, I look for consistency. I look for, you know, my father was a CPA and he used to say, you know, check the arithmetic. And I do that because, you know, over the years or decades that I've been writing about business and finance. I look for outliers in the data and when I see something like that, it warrants further checking and it warrants skepticism, actually. So, you know, I look for trends to be consistent. I look for the data to be coherent and cohesive.

• 6:22Speaker 04

  And basically, you know, if I can, I check one source against the other and then try to see if doing that turns up some flaw or flaws in the print.

• 6:36Barry Ritholtz?

  So you mentioned check the math. Are there any other common data quality issues that you encounter that investors should be aware of?

• 6:45Speaker 04

  Well, there is some consistent flaws or errors or mistakes that I find typically in news reports that use these data and then try to draw conclusions. I think, you know, I both probably feel that data that's produced without an inflation deflator or without an acknowledgement, particularly if it's a trend line, is something that I try to fix if I can. But certainly, that's a context that is consistently lacking in reports of the data.

• 7:28Speaker 04

  I, you know, when I'm reading a report of an economic release, you know, in almost any newspaper, I will always try to go back to the original print, not rely on somebody's interpretation. I've just seen interpretations of data just be all over the place, particularly if we're talking about. Government programs that rely on on financial statistics like social security, Medicare, Obamacare, I just see so many problems in reporting on those programs because reporters don't do the math, or they don't do their homework, or they they come at these programs

• 8:13Speaker 04

  through a political perspective that basically allows them to ignore what's really happening.

• 8:21Barry Ritholtz?

  So you mentioned making sure the data is inflation adjusted. You and I have spoken about seasonality and how often that seems to trip up consumers of data. What other problems tend to arise when you see a commonly used data source or data series?

• 8:43Speaker 04

  Well, those are the big, those are the big ones. You know, if I'm looking at a chart, if it, if it's a trend line chart and it doesn't go to zero, so that you don't really know, you can't really tell, you know, if a change is significant, or if it's an artifact of big numbers or small numbers, I want to be suspicious about that. So, and we see the, you know, we see these flaws in reporting all over the place. The major newspapers, the wire services, cable news, they are basically winging it and they're using data, they're using numbers that they get and they're misinterpreting them sometimes wildly.

• 9:28Barry Ritholtz?

  So you you mentioned Fred, which I really think of as an online software tool that depicts data series in a graph or an image. Any other software or tools that you find useful?

• 9:41Speaker 04

  Well, from time to time, we, you know, we at the LA Times, we've used FactSet,

• 9:48Speaker 04

  we've used Y-charts. I'm not sure, I'm pretty sure that we're not even subscribers to them anymore, but we use, you know, for raw data and graphical displays, I find Yahoo Finance is as good as as anything else. But you know, when I'm using these these sources, I do want to go back and double check the numbers just to make sure that what what I'm using are the figures that were produced originally.

• 10:20Barry Ritholtz?

  What about trade organizations? I recall frequently, especially during the financial crisis, being annoyed by a lot of the spin from the National Association of Realtors, who are the original source of a lot of housing sales data.

• 10:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think I think you're absolutely right about that. I mean, if I need to turn to an industry source or a lobbying organization or what have you, like the National, like the NAM, the franchisees have have something and they all produce figures. If I'm looking for a figure that they produce, I mean, if I want to say, you know, the National Association of Manufacturers says this, then I'll use it. But with the caveat that that's who they are, you can't always trust them. They are almost always talking their book, so to speak.

• 11:20Speaker 04

  And we have to keep that in mind. And it's got to be reflected in what I write as well. And often, look, you know, some of these outfits are sources that that I rely on to debunk. And it's always a good column if I can say, look, here's what these guys said, and here's how they got the numbers wrong. And here's why they probably deliberately got the numbers wrong.

• 11:44Barry Ritholtz?

  What about think tanks? They publish analytical data frequently, but I would hardly consider them objective or disinterested parties.

• 11:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, I agree. Some are better than others. Some I will use or quote, without too much fear, the Peterson Institute of International Economics, I find consistently pretty good. Definitely useful for for trade.

• 12:13Speaker 04

  Issues, trade figures, trade commentary. There's another Peterson-funded think tank, the Commission for the Responsible Federal Budget. I mean, sometimes I find them useful, sometimes their analysis is so infected by ideology or partisanship that I have to walk back when I see, I have to sort of, you know, recalculate what they've used.

• 12:41Barry Ritholtz?

  So you had a column recently on Tesla. What about public companies? How do we evaluate things like, not just earnings, but forward guidance and all sorts of, sometimes it's a little bit of happy talk about what's coming in the future.

• 12:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, I think, you know, if we're, you know, to the extent they're putting out disclosed financials, you know, subject to SEC oversight, they are, that is what it is. You know, I can say, this is what they've disclosed, this is what they've said. Forward guidance, I think, you know, forward guidance to me is basically, you know, trying to shoehorn a long-term perspective into a snapshot. It's very rare that it's useful at all. And of course, that also depends on who's doing the forward guidance.

• 13:40Speaker 04

  When we had Elon Musk, you know, deliver a, you know, financial Q and A just last night, I'm not, I'm not sure that any of that is useful, any more than anything he says is useful. And it was, it was very Muskian, you know, it was, you know, we're going to have, you know, we're, you know, we're going to have robots, you know, cleaning our house and, you know, take care of our children by the end of next year, you know? I mean, his timelines are always suspect. And others, a company that's in trouble.

• 14:16Speaker 04

  You want to be, you know, very cautious about, you know, what they're saying. You know, a company that's revising its forward guidance or dropping its forward guidance. I think we all know these are red flags.

• 14:31Barry Ritholtz?

  Yeah, I've been waiting for fully self-driving cars now for 10 years and it's always two years away. So let me ask a slightly offbeat question.

• 14:46Barry Ritholtz?

  Early in my career, there was this entire group of conspiracy theorists who believed that the BLS was cooking the data, that you couldn't trust BEA, that all of the government sources of information were partisan and biased and completely unreliable. That hasn't been my experience, but what's your experience like?

• 15:12Speaker 04

  Well, no, it hasn't been my experience. And look, you know, the data, the statistics that come out of those agencies, basically, you know, these are time trend prints essentially.

• 15:31Speaker 04

  And they're the benchmarks. So I think we have to rely on them as benchmarks. And we know that BLS and BEA, I think, periodically revise their methodology, but they're transparent about it. And, you know, as long as we recognize that there's a break in the trend line, then I think we can deal with it safely. But, you know, politicians are always sort of attacking these sources when the numbers that they produce, you know, are inimical to their partisan goals. And, you know, we have to get used to it. We're certainly seeing that now. I think

• 16:12Speaker 04

  we'll see it more. You know, we're going to see an attack on Fed data. It's just intensifying.

• 16:20Barry Ritholtz?

  So what are the other pitfalls that investors should be aware of when it comes to economic data?

• 16:26Speaker 04

  I think investors always have to be sensitive to the source of the data they're relying on. They have to be cautious about sort of second order or third order interpretations. The data certainly on a macroeconomic or agency level is always accessible, but you know, I sympathize with investors who just don't have the time to go back and look. I think projections of market activity, these are, you know, never of great value. You know, projections are always good and accurate, right up to the point that they're not.

• 17:10Speaker 04

  So, you know, and sort of larger, larger issues, you know, when I, when I hear somebody talking about, well, liquidity is going to drive the market or something like that, I don't really put much trust or reliance in that.

• 17:24Barry Ritholtz?

  So to wrap up, investors who are looking to learn more from economic data need to go to the original sources, prioritize, make sure you are aware of things like inflation adjusting and seasonal adjustments. Be wary about trade organizations and think tanks. Not all of them are objective. The same is true about forward guidance from companies, public companies about what they see in the future. And just generally use common sense when it comes to analyzing the endless fire hose of economic data. I'm Barry Ritholtz. You're listening to At the Money on Bloomberg.

• 18:08Speaker 00

  At KKR, we've spent 50 years understanding what matters to our clients and companies. From pioneering private equity to investing across credit, real assets, insurance and sports, KKR has built the experience to navigate complexity, the judgment to recognize opportunity, and the conviction to create lasting value. Because when people and institutions are counting on us, understanding what matters isn't just important, it's everything. KKR, understanding what matters. Visit kkr.com/whatmatters.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  This is the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. I'm Carol Muster. Getting hired at SpaceX requires exceptional ability and may include having Elon Musk review a candidate's resume, so writes Bloomberg Business Week's Lauren Grush. She reports that the company culture is defined by Musk and job candidates must understand that a commitment to SpaceX means adhering to this culture and exhibiting loyalty to Elon Musk. To get hired, candidates must demonstrate their achievements from past jobs, and hands-on experience matters more to recruiters than advanced degrees, with the company looking for people with raw innate intelligence. A spokesperson for SpaceX didn't respond to a request for comment on its recruiting and

• 19:23Speaker 01

  hiring practices, but according to recruiters, advisors, and those who've interviewed for jobs there, it's the space exploration dream that draws people to the company, and Musk invokes that dream regularly to remind workers why they're there. Prospective hires are told that the job will require stamina, including in job ads that candidates, quote, "must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed." One major perk for all that hard work? Employees' access to equity, either the right to buy shares or payment in the form of restricted stock units that vest over time. That's the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. Get started at ChatGPT.com.

• 20:04Speaker 05

  If you're a business owner, you need a card that can keep up. With the Delta SkyMiles Reserve Business American Express Card, everyday purchases transform into miles you can use towards future travel, so business as usual can lead to a well-deserved getaway. And for a limited time, card members can earn 200,000 bonus miles, the highest miles offered this year. Whether you're traveling for business or planning your next adventure, now's a great time to make every purchase go further. Apply today at www.delta.com/podcast. Offer ends November 4. Minimum spending requirements and terms apply.

• 20:40Speaker 06

  Congratulations, you've built a dashboard. But now comes the follow-up question, and the follow-up to the follow-up, and the dashboard for that. Meet Hex. Give everyone the power to ask their own questions, explore data, and build with AI, all in natural language. Because every answer should spark another question, limited only by your curiosity, not your data team's bandwidth. Go deeper than dashboards. Visit hex.ai.

• 21:11Speaker 07

  A business gift should do more than check a box. It should reflect your brand and show someone they're appreciated, recognized, and truly seen. 4imprint offers thousands of high-quality customizable products, like premium apparel, drinkware, tech, and more, making it easy to create a gift that feels meaningful and on-brand. And with 4imprint's expert support and their 360-degree guarantee, you can be 4imprint certain your order will arrive exactly as intended. Explore gifting with confidence at 4imprint.com. 4imprint: For Certain.