CNBC's Bob Pisani: 10,000 bell ringings on the floor of the NYSE and counting…

Press Profiles: What's their story?

On the latest edition of Press Profiles - a conversation with Bob Pisani.

The NYSE is an institution, and so is Bob Pisani. The CNBC veteran has been manning the floor of the exchange for the business network for more than 25 years. On this edition of Press Profiles, we hear about his encounters with notable luminaries such as Walter Cronkite, Muhammad Ali, and Barry Manilow (who knew he wrote the State Farm jingle?). We also discuss music posters, ignoring his dad's career advice, and many of his phrases to live by including, “when drinking with traders, stay one drink behind, and shut up.”

You can listen to the episode and subscribe to Press Profiles here, or wherever you get your podcasts, and follow along with the transcript of our conversation below.

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????????????????????????????????????? BOB PISANI:

Hi, this is Bob Pisani, senior markets correspondent for CNBC. And you're listening to Press Profiles.

????????????????????????????????????? RUSSELL SHERMAN:

(MUSIC) Welcome everybody to Press Profiles, a podcast where we sit down with some of the top reporters, editors, and anchors in business news. And we turn the tables. They're used to telling the stories, but on this podcast they are the source. We dig into their history, how they got into journalism, some of their favorite memories.

And we finish it off with some quick hits and fast facts, all with the goal of giving you insight in folks that are driving the news cycle. And on today's episode we have one of the OGs, one of the most recognizable folks I'd say on business television news, a man synonymous with reporting from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. I am talking about the one and only Bob Pisani.

We're gonna talk about Bob's long career at CNBC, his favorite memories from the floor of the exchange, some of his heroes he's met along the way, some notable events and changes at the exchange. We'll also explore his love for music and music posters, his stellar Room Rater score that he got during COVID, the book he wrote called Shut Up and Keep Talking at the end of which he lists some great axioms that we'll talk about every journalist should live by. One example: When drinking with traders, stay one drink behind and shut up. (MUSIC) We'll talk about that and a whole lot more. Here now is Bob Pisani on Press Profile. Bob, welcome.

????????????????????????????????????? BOB PISANI:

Russell, thank you so much for having me. It's a great honor to be with you.

????????????????????????????????????? RUSSELL SHERMAN:

Oh, it's great to have you on. So when drinking with traders, stay one drink behind and shut up. (LAUGH) I mean, that's good advice.

????????????????????????????????????? BOB PISANI:

One of the occupational hazards of working on Wall Street is it's historically been a community that when they close down at 4:00, at 5:00 you're usually somewhere with a friend, usually another trader having a libation somewhere. And Wall Street has produced some very famous drinkers.

And of course, I'm a journalist. So one of the reasons I hang out with traders after hours is to get more color or maybe more candid color perhaps hopefully than you might get during the day. And one of the rules I've discovered is there are some real professionals out there, not just traders, but in the drinking community.

And so you have to develop certain rules of interaction with them. So there's one of them. Stay one drink behind. I think Humphrey Bogart once said that the whole world is three drinks behind us in one of his movies. I like to try to stay a little bit behind everybody.

????????????????????????????????????? RUSSELL SHERMAN:

Well, then it's probably added to your longevity, right? Twenty-six years on the floor reporting, one of the longest ranked tenures of anyone to ever do that, I would assume. You also had another maxim that I'm guessing has a lot to do with your success in that role.

Basically, you said, "Ignore the vast audience you mistakenly think is watching, and speak to a single person who has intense interest in what you are saying, and answer their questions." Is that kind of what goes through your mind every time you're about to go on the air?

????????????????????????????????????? BOB PISANI:

I developed that because when I first started in 1990 at CNBC (it was 34 years ago), I was staring into this black camera. And I couldn't figure out who was watching. And I had a lot of problems with this because I like to know who am I talking to. And rather than assume that somebody's watching, I invented a person who I thought it seemed likely was watching.

And this person was living in Minneapolis, working for 3M. I was doing mostly real estate reporting at the time. And so this person was in her late 50s and had two kids in their mid-20s that were buying a home and was very interested in real estate.

And I talked specifically to this person. I knew she knew what mortgages were, but she didn't know, for example, what a mortgage-backed security was. So if I used that term, "mortgage-backed security," I had to define what it was. I assumed she knew a certain amount, but not beyond that.

And by focusing on a person and understanding what they knew and they didn't know, it sharpened the reporting a lot for me. And it helped me to just inform the way the style of the kind of reporting that I was doing. And I still think about certain kinds of viewers when I'm doing particularly stock reporting that's out there.

????????????????????????????????????? RUSSELL SHERMAN:

So interesting. A mother of two in Minneapolis, works for 3M. Has that persona, that person, changed over time in different ways?

????????????????????????????????????? BOB PISANI:

Remember, this is an invented person. But yes, it did. And over time now I see a man who is 55 years old. He's living in Florida. He's not a day trader. But he has got $2 million, $3 million in the market. And he's watching the market.

????????????????????????????????????? RUSSELL SHERMAN:

This is what I call it.

????????????????????????????????????? BOB PISANI:

They're not traders. They don't sit there and day trade. But they watch the markets. They know what's going on. They're intensely interested because it affects their investments. And this person knows a certain amount about the markets. He knows for example what an annuity is.

He may not know more technical aspects of the market. I get very careful about talking about things like options or zero date of expiration options. I get very careful about talkin' about more obscure aspects of the international markets. If I use strange terms, I define them. So yes, it's changed a little bit for me. But I still find that talking to a viewer out there who's a sort of representative of the generic viewer that I think is watching is helpful.

????????????????????????????????????? RUSSELL SHERMAN:

Let's start at the beginning. You weren't always going to be a journalist, right? You started in real estate development I think with your dad. And your dad, not such a big fan of journalism.

????????????????????????????????????? BOB PISANI:

No. I had two things I really wanted to be when I was growing up. One was a physicist. I was really interested, and Albert Einstein was my hero. I was really interested in the space program. And I wanted to be a writer. I'm almost 70. In the 1960s, writers were public intellectuals like Norman Mailer, Gay Talese.

These people were part of the public discourse that today writers are not part of public discourse, which is kind of disappointing to me. They're not public intellectuals in the way they used to be. But that's what I wanted to be. I failed pretty much as a physicist.

I thought I was a mediocre mathematician. But I always wanted to be a writer. And I grew up in the real estate business. My father was a developer in Philadelphia, an apartment house builder. And I worked on all of his projects after school.

And the time came when I was 21 years old where he came to me and said, "Well, now you've worked for me for years. You know how physically a building goes up. But the money in this is in the financing and dealing with the bankers. How would you like to go into business with me, Ralph Pisani and Sons, blah, blah?"

And I said, "No." And he said, "Why?" (LAUGH) I said, "Well, 'cause I'm not that fascinated with real estate." And he said, "What do you want to do?" I'm 21. I said, "Well, I want to be a writer. I want to be a journalist." My father was a poor Italian kid from the Bronx, didn't know any writers.

He looked at me and said, "Robert, how much money does a journalist make?" And I said, "Have no idea." And he looked at me and said, "Let me get this straight. You want to go into a business where you have no idea whether you can make a living. And I'm offering you the chance.

"And I guarantee you you're gonna make a very good living. You see this house I'm in?" He had a big house in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. And he said, "I can build you a house like this 'cause we're builders. Does this not interest you?" And I said, "Well, yes. But I want to be a writer."

And he said, "Robert, I think you're not makin' any sense. And I think you need to reconsider your career decisions." Well, my father and I sort of didn't agree. And my father was friends with the head of the real estate school, Wharton. And they became friends.

And he started teaching as an adjunct professor at the Wharton School in the mid-1980s and brought me in to help him because he needed help teaching a course like this. And we wrote a book that was the curriculum for the course published by John Wiley in 1989.

By sheer dumb luck, April '89, book came out; How to Be a Successful Developer was the title. And it was the week CNBC went on the air. This is sheer dumb luck. This is part of that odd circumstances of life. One of my best friends was one of the first producers.

She called me and said, "NBC started this new cable company, CNBC. And we're tryin' to do finance and consumer stuff. And what are you doing?" I said, "Well, I'm teaching real estate and got a book out on real estate." And they said, "Come on."

They had me on as a guest. And they hired me as a real estate correspondent. This was in the very first year at CNBC in 1990. And I did that for six years. And ultimately what happened to CNBC (what really made us) was the internet. In August of 1995, Netscape went public.

And that was a huge thing. And that basically made us. All of a sudden you had people who were able to trade at home because they had home computers with this shiny object called the internet. And we just took off. Our ratings went up in direct proportion to the Nasdaq for the next five years all the way into 2000.

And I became the stocks correspondent in '97. We were getting ratings, not 'cause I was the real estate correspondent. (LAUGH) We were getting ratings because the internet was the shiny object. And I wanted to be part of that. And I became the stocks correspondent in the summer of '97. And I came down on the floor.

????????????????????????????????????? RUSSELL SHERMAN:

Let me ask you. Because you joined CNBC as you said, which by the way, a consumer news and business channel.

????????????????????????????????????? BOB PISANI:

That was the initial name of it.

????????????????????????????????????? RUSSELL SHERMAN:

So you do that for a while...eventually either make the pitch or get pitched by them to start reporting from the floor of the exchange. Now there were other people already reporting from the floor of the exchange. But what was it about you and about that opportunity that you think was appealing to the executives at CNBC to give you that role?

????????????????????????????????????? BOB PISANI:

This is one of those things where once in a lifetime, once in a career, you make a choice. And people are confronted with choices all the time about what's the right thing to do. So there's that fork in the road. Do I stay at what I was doing?

To me it was very obvious. One of the few right choices I made in my life that was really a career-defining moment was this decision to push going in. And what was obvious to me was that it was the stock market that was the hot thing, not the real estate market.

And I wanted to be where the action was. That was my perfect motivation. I mean, there wasn't anything much more sophisticated than that. And I met several times with the executives at CNBC and asked about it. And eventually that's what happened.

I can't emphasize enough the serendipity here. I always tell people, particularly young people, "I hope there's some time in your career where all of a sudden everything is going right, and the wind is at your back, and your career is doing well, and you're really genuinely excited about going to work.

"Not you say you're excited, but you actually really are excited." That's what it was like from CNBC from 1990 to 2000. We were really a start-up. And every day it was just so tremendous to come to work. And then to have the good luck to have all of a sudden the internet craze that helped make us, which nobody planned.

We didn't plan on it in 1990, I can assure you. It just happened and fall into our laps while we're standing there. And we just took that and ran with that idea. 'Cause people had the ability to invest at home. And they had an amazing new vehicle to invest in which is the internet.

????????????????????????????????????? RUSSELL SHERMAN:

It was amazing. For those that didn't experience it, before that time, it was not something people were paying attention to. And then the tech IPO craze takes place. And essentially the reason everyone gravitated towards sports and sports center, right, over on the finance side, and everyone's flocking over to CNBC to see if it's a way they can make money. People getting rich so quickly, and the tech boom taking place which is just fascinating.

????????????????????????????????????? BOB PISANI:

This doesn't happen that often. You don't see major inflection points coming in that often. And part (I talk about this in the book) is the ability to recognize these moments and to try to make something out of them. It's really hard to decide.

And there are a number of times in my career where I had to make a decision about what I wanted to do. So let me flip this over. Summer of 2000, dot.com bust. We go from dot.com boom from '95 to summer of 2000, bust. And by early 2001, market's down.

Our ratings are down too. And we go into the fall of 2001, 9/11 happens. Now all of a sudden downtown is a smoking ruin. And, I mean, you could smell it for a year. The smell of death was in the air. And I mean literally it was very depressing.

All of us down here had friends who died. There was a recession going on. We had lost friends. Our ratings were down. People down here, I mean, in the whole financial district were just in a state of depression. I was for the loss to the country and what was goin' on in the country.

And I seriously thought about leaving CNBC. I thought to myself "Gee this is it. We've had a great run, 11 years. It was wonderful." But people down here were thinking of leaving too. I wasn't the only one, not just me as a financial reporter, but even everybody that worked on the floor.

And what happened: (there's a chapter in the book about this) I learned to meditate. I know this sounds ridiculous. But I actually joined a Buddhist meditation society in Midtown, (it was secular meditation) and learned how to meditate. And what the meditation taught me was: what happened was not my fault.

It didn't have anything to do with me. I was simply in this river of experience. And when you sit there and think about what happens, you realize that while what happened wasn't your fault or didn't happen because of you, the problem I was having is the way I was relating to all these events.

The way I was relating to the death of my friends, the recession, the smell of death in the air, these are emotions that you have about things that are around you. But the emotions only really exist in your head. They don't have an external reality.

And what meditation teaches you is you can have a relationship with these thoughts and not let them rule you. You can look at this anxiety that you're having, (which is what I was having, the anxiety about staying here) and look at it sort of dispassionately.

And you can change that relationship that you have with that thought. You can actually even change the anxiousness that you're feeling when you learn to look at that emotion like something that's floating out there rather than something that's embedded in your head that you can't ever get out.

So once I went through (literally it was six months) of this, I actually moved in next door to where they were in Midtown, I calmed down. And I realized, "Gee, it's true what the Buddhists say. You don't step in the same river twice. Things are always changing." You need to adapt.

And do I like this job? Yeah, I really like it. And I made the decision to stay, to stay put. I made a conscious decision to do nothing, which is really hard. And I discuss this in the book also. The hardest thing in life is an exit strategy. You can luck into a stock investment.

You can luck into a nice job. You can luck into a relationship with a girlfriend or a boyfriend. But deciding when you want to get out is really hard. And I have seen a lot of people stumble on decisions to get out of stocks, out of jobs, out of relationships.

And so I talk about this a little bit in the book as well. I made the conscious decision to do nothing. And that is itself a decision. And I'm still here. It's 22 years later. And I don't think I made the wrong decision. I am happy. Because what happened to me was I acquired very great expertise in a little part of the world called the stock market inch-wide, mile-deep.

That's the way to describe somebody like me. I just decided to stay put. And what happens is eventually you become very, very well-known for this little part of the world which is why I actually wrote that book to explain what I think I know.

????????????????????????????????????? RUSSELL SHERMAN:

Do you still meditate?

????????????????????????????????????? BOB PISANI:

Yes. I do. It's always been very cursory for me, like 15 minutes a day. I've tried to expand it in the last year. There's a couple of amazingly great apps that are out there that I would highly recommend (SLURS). The Waking Up app is particularly good. And some of these are guided meditations that help you a lot. But it doesn't work for a lot of people. Some people just don't get the point. Like, "What am I doing? What am I supposed to be thinking?"

????????????????????????????????????? RUSSELL SHERMAN:

Yeah. I work closely with Ray Dalio. I've worked for a number of years. And he is a big proponent of meditation. And he looks at it as slowing down the world around him, almost like you're in one of the Ninja movies with everything moving in slow motion around you.

????????????????????????????????????? BOB PISANI:

That's exactly right. The first night this ever happened to me was my first meditation class. As I walked out of it after the first hour, I was walkin' down 7th Avenue. It was March of 2002. And for the first time I saw 7th Avenue. Just like you describe it with Dalio.

Like, everyone was walking in slow motion. Like New Yorkers, we always act like, "You're in my way. Come on. I gotta keep goin'." But for the first time I felt out of my head watching everyone. I was aware of where everybody was. I wasn't in a hurry to get anywhere particularly.

And the feeling was so profound of being present, I thought to myself, "This is what they're talking about." This "be here now" stuff I've been hearing about for 20 years, this mindfulness thing. And you have to sort of experience it emotionally. And when you do, it's really overwhelming. I know exactly the spot on the street on 7th Avenue where I first said, "Oh, this is it. This is what they mean." And it's very moving and profound. It's kept me at it for 20 years.

????????????????????????????????????? RUSSELL SHERMAN:

Amazing. Let's go back to the energy of the exchange floor. What a lotta people don't know is the bell ringing was never really an event, not always anyway, I should say. Dick Grasso and Bob Zito basically came up with the idea to make it an event and have interesting people ring the bell, whether it was the open or the close.

And you've seen that whole transformation. But it's also allowed you the opportunity to meet some of the most amazing people in the world who've come through there. Basically no two days are the same. But I'm guessing based on who's ringing the bell and closin' the bell, some are more special than others.

????????????????????????????????????? BOB PISANI:

Yeah. So you're right. Prior to Dick Grasso and Bob Zito who was the head of communications here, the bell ringings were mostly almost exclusively done by exchange officials. There were a couple of people who did it before that. Gorbachev came with Reagan.

There was a fellow who did a game show 1950s who rang the bell. But by and large, under Dick Grasso in the 1990s and Bob Zito, that's when they decided to make it an event. And it turned in to be a spectacular event. The biggest year of my life was 1999.

And boy, in December 1999 the cascade of people who I met. Walter Cronkite, my childhood hero, the greatest TV reporter of his time, and Muhammad Ali, and so many other people, that they turned it into a really global event. So people ask me, "Why have you been here for 27 years or 26 years?"

And I say, "Well, what would you give to meet all of your heroes? What would you give to meet every single person you ever wanted to meet?" I've met just about everybody, rock stars, kings and queens, and people who were in the political sphere, and a lot of CEOs, almost every CEO you would ever want.

So think about it. Every day there's a opening and closing bell. Sometimes it's a charity, but often, you know, there's the CEO of Chevron. He's standing right there. You may not be doing an interview with him, but you walk up to him. 'Cause everyone knows who I am. Say, "Hello. How are you?"

What's it worth to spend five minutes alone with the CEO of Chevron asking him, "How's business? What's goin' on"? It's worth a lot. What's it worth spending five minutes with Aretha Franklin alone or Robert Downey, Jr.?" And so you get these opportunities to sit there.

Sometimes it's an official interview capacity. But more often than not, you're chatting with them. And it could be very interesting. Some days things happen that you don't expect to have happen. One day Barry Manilow came down, rang the closing bell.

Now I'm not a Barry Manilow fan. I'm a Led Zeppelin guy. I'm a 1970's rock guy. But he was promoting an album. And one of the things you find out about famous people, particularly entertainers, is what really interests them is not what they're promoting now.

There's something else usually. So he was promoting an album. And he came off. And my colleague did the interview with him very briefly. And I said to him, "So let me ask you a question." He was just standing there. This is what's great about being at NYSE. He is just standin' there comin' off, sort of staring around.

There was nobody around 'cause it was after hours. And I walked up to him. And I said, "Hi, Bob Pisani. Two things I gotta ask you." First thing is always say something to somebody that might prompt a amusing answer. So I said, "I understand you used to be a jingo writer.

"And you wrote the State Farm jingle. (SINGS) Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Is that right?" And he said, "Oh, yeah, yeah. I wrote that. I wrote that in the '70s. And I got paid $500 for it. And I'm proud of the fact that it's been around.

"And I'm not sorry that I did it and that I sold it for $500. Who knew I was a jingle writer. That's why I did it." And he did other ones. He said he did a Band-Aid commercial. He sung that. And it was like, "Oh, this is cool. Barry Manilow is singin' for me, sittin' right here."

And then I said, "So listen, you're selling out this gigantic arena here in Long Island. 20,000 people in Long Island. You've been around. You're famous. But you haven't a big hit in years. How do you do this?" He said, "You know, I'm gonna tell you.

"I was fortunate enough to have big hits in the '70s and early '80s. And a lot of the big hits stopped. But I still kept doing albums. I still kept doing what I like to do. I still had fans. I just didn't have a lot of big hits. But my albums sold very, very well.

"And what I did was I kept sticking to it. I kept doing what I really love. And eventually you stay at this long enough and somebody starts callin' you a legend. And then all of a sudden, another person calls you up and wants to do something. 'Cause you just survive so long."

And it sounds very simple. But it's actually very profound. He was doing exactly what I would do. I made a decision to stick around for a long time. And that's sort of what happened to me too in my own little way, not Barry Manilow way. But Manilow said, "I'm a survivor.

"And I've survived and people noticed it. And people want to see people who are survivors." So in my own way, I thought nothing about saying hello to Barry Manilow. And it turned out, you know, it was all of ten, 15-minute conversation. But it was actually very interesting and profound in the way he looked at his life and his career.

????????????????????????????????????? RUSSELL SHERMAN:

What about your interaction with Cronkite? Because again Walter Cronkite and another group of luminaries came through as part of the promotion, the end of the century in December of '99. They brought you a number of different folks as you mentioned, Joe Namath, Walter Cronkite, Muhammad A little, a bunch of others. What about the interaction with Cronkite?

????????????????????????????????????? BOB PISANI:

Well, I was scared to death about meeting Cronkite because he had been retired by then. This was December '99. But I was afraid of him because he had been very critical of cable news broadcasters. He had said that there was way too much opinions in these cable.

And of course there was. I mean, cable was different than your 30-minute news at 6:30 from the big networks. There's more time to develop ideas, thoughts. And people who had personalities were sort of rewarded. So he was very critical of this. Too much opinions, not enough journalism.

And I thought he was gonna lambaste me when I went up and said hello to him. I said, "Gee, Mr. Cronkite, Bob Pisani. I grew up with you. I'm so excited to meet you. You're a role model. Thank you for coming down here, blah, blah." I'm like some slobbering fan all over him. (LAUGHTER)

And I didn't even care. I was just (LAUGH) happy to meet him. I have a picture with him. It's one of my favorite pictures that I keep with me. And he said, "You know, I have to tell you I'm amazed at your success. You're in the news all the time. We never covered financial news in this kind of depth before.

"I'm just amazed that people are so interested. What do you attribute this to?" And we had a chat for a few minutes. Instead of lambasting me and telling me I had too many opinions, he was really interested. And I'm thinkin' to myself, "Oh, my God, Walter Cronkite is interviewing me. This is the greatest thing ever. I'm so excited."

?And this was not an interview that I did. I'm just literally standing on the floor alone with him. But this is one of those moments you kind of always remember. I was with Aretha Franklin once. And I did a formal interview with her. She was promoting a Christmas album in 2008.

It was a terrible year, 2008 at Christmas, you can imagine. But I knew she wasn't that interested in the Christmas album. She was interested in a bio-pic about herself. And they had just had this bio-pic Ray about Ray Charles out. And I said to her, "What do you think about this? And what about your role?"

'Cause it showed how Ray Charles invented soul music. It was an educational film. And she said, "Well, thank you for asking. I work at this right now. I want to be a part of this myself." And it took, like, 14 years, but that Aretha Franklin bio-pic finally came out.

And she unfortunately passed away before it was ever finished. But it went through many iterations. But that was sort of the origin right there, that year. And her manager came up to me afterwards and said, "I don't know what you said to her. But she doesn't normally spend that much time with people.

?

"Whatever you said, you got her interest somehow." So this is my point to all these people who ask me about interview tips. Find out what the person you're talking to really wants to talk about (it's often not what they're there to supposedly talk about) if you really want to get somebody animated.

????????????????????????????????????? RUSSELL SHERMAN:

The book you wrote is called Shut Up and Keep Talking. Why that title?

????????????????????????????????????? BOB PISANI:

Yeah, so you have titles for books. So I had a publisher. Harriman House was my publisher, but a wonderful publisher, wonderful experience with them. And I was talkin' to my editor before we finished the book. And he said, "Okay, so what's about the title?"

I said, "Well, I want to call it something like Lessons on Life and Investing from the Floor of the New York Stock Exchange. 'Cause that's what it is." He said, "Well, forget about that. That's not a title. That's a subtitle. What's the title?" And I said, "Well, all right, I don't know."

He said, "Well, all right, look, you're a TV reporter. What do they say to you? You have an earpiece." I said, "Yes, it's called an IFB. It's in your ear. And you talk to the producers waiting to go on the air." "All right, so what do the producers say to you?"

'Hi, Bob. You're next. Carl is tossing to you. They might have a question at the end. But otherwise, you can toss back to David.'" But usually while you're talking they'll do some variation on two words.

One is the word "wrap" which means "shut up." And the other is "stretch" which means "keep talking." So I said, "The producers could say anything they want. But historically my experience is usually it's some variation on, 'Shut up and keep talking.'" And he said, "That's it. (LAUGH) That's the title, Shut Up and Keep Talking."

????????????????????????????????????? RUSSELL SHERMAN:

I love it. You add, as I mentioned at the top, a bunch of different maxims in the end of the book. I wanted to read some of 'em. I thought they were great. Thou shall make it air, that's the important thing to reporters. Whatever you do, make sure you end up on the air.

Talk and make sense, you stay employed. Don't talk, don't make sense, you're unemployed. Content always trumps presentation, but make sure your tie is straight. Don't get nervous, but always remain in the state of mild agitation. You know you're in trouble when the best sources call you and ask what's going on.

The most valuable sources are both those that know what they're talking about and who can provide an honest opinion, and those are not necessarily the same thing. And then authenticity is always preferable, but if you're an authentic asshole, work on a convincing alternative persona.

????????????????????????????????????? BOB PISANI:

Yeah. First about authenticity, this is a word that greatly annoys me. Because somehow it has a strong currency today. And my point about authenticity is your authentic self is not really known to anybody including yourself. So are we being authentic right now?

Both of us are assuming certain roles here. In public appearances and even just sitting in a café, you're assuming a certain persona. So I think "honesty" is a better word than "authenticity." But it seems to be a word that's in a lot of currency.

So I wrote these maxims (there are 58 of them) because I've been collecting them my whole life. Because I don't know about you, but I was inveterate quotation reader. When I was a kid, I had a Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. And I still have that original book.

And I have all sorts of quotation books. I've always loved maxims. Maxims are short pithy statements about a particular topic that usually have a sharp edge or a humorous edge to them. For some reason, maxims are not very popular anymore, particularly among the younger set.

I don't know why. It may be because some of them have an air of cynicism to them. Some of them are a little too witty. Some of them may be a little too erudite or a little too literary in a society that doesn't value literature that much anymore. I don't know.

?But if you're interested in the world, and there's a very famous novelist who once said, "If you want to be a successful novelist, try to be someone on whom nothing is lost." So stare around you at the world. I'm in the TV business. And I'm in the financial world.

These are two very interesting very interesting businesses that attract a lot of sharp-edged, sometimes crazy people. And if you want to sit and watch how these people act, you can learn an awful lot about human behavior. So these 58 maxims are sort of my attempt to distill some of the things that I have seen. You mentioned the first one. Thou shalt make air. If you don't make air, (LAUGH) it doesn't matter that much.

????????????????????????????????????? RUSSELL SHERMAN:

Nothing else matters.

????????????????????????????????????? BOB PISANI:

It really doesn't. "Talk, make sense, employed. Don't talk, don't make sense, unemployed," is a very simple way of saying, "You better figure out some way to make sense and some way to communicate." I'm talkin' about this journalistic thing. And if you don't, you're not gonna make it at all. It's the shortest, pithiest way I've been able to explain that.

????????????????????????????????????? RUSSELL SHERMAN:

Well, there are a lotta great ones. So I recommend the book. It's a great read. And you hear all about Bob's fantastic career and what he's learned along the way and also some investment advice that he's seen and learned nd gives you some insights there.

Should we wrap it up with some quick hits, give everyone more of an opportunity to learn a little bit more about Bob Pisani and what makes you tick? And one of the first ones I wanted to ask you about was: You are a big fan of music in general.

And you collect music posters. I mentioned your Room Rating at the top. And part of the reason I think you scored so high (this is on Twitter or whatever rates the correspondents in their home offices, what they look like) is you have this amazing array of music posters. So give us a top couple of ones that you love the most.

????????????????????????????????????? BOB PISANI:

I've been collecting rock posters for almost 40 years. The first one I had was a Led Zeppelin poster from 1977. In fact, it was the last Led Zeppelin show in the United States. And that was I Oakland Coliseum in California. And it's a very interesting hobby.

I'm a '60s guy. I'm almost 70. So I was a teenager in the late '60s, but really grew up in the '70s. The art that I collect is mostly 1966 (?) to '72. It's called Psychedelia. And these artists who did this, I consider them like the artists from the 1890s, the Toulouse Lautrecs.

They created a new visual style. Psychedelia is very noticeable. And it's still big and very impactful in the digital arts. You can see psychedelic style today in posters, in virtually anything. So we're talkin' Jimi Hendrix at the Fillmore, you know, or Sly Stone at the Fillmore East.

Most of these were done in San Francisco. Some were done in Detroit, a few in New York, a few in Denver. But it was a fairly short-lived period of time. But neo-Psychedelia, I call it, new manifestations of Psychedelia have been popping up for years and years.

????????????????????????????????????? RUSSELL SHERMAN:

Give me the one poster that's your favorite?

????????????????????????????????????? BOB PISANI:

Well, I wouldn't call it my favorite. I give an example in the book about behavioral economics where behavioral economics purports to show what people really do, not what they're supposed to do. So people don't buy low and sell high. They do the opposite.

So as an example of how dumb you can be, there was a Black Sabbath poster that I was interested in a few years ago from 1975. I'm not a Black Sabbath fan. But this is a fairly famous poster, probably their most famous one. And I was in an auction. So I figured, "Well, what could it be worth?"

When you're bidding on things, you need to set a price limit. I don't care if you're collecting stamps or nickels or whatever. So I figure, "Oh, okay, this thing could be worth $500." So it was $200, I bid $300. Immediately somebody comes back at $400.

I said, "Hum. That's interesting. $500." And so immediately $500 was my limit. And for some reason I don't understand, I bid $600. And immediately the person, who was somebody on the other side, bid $750. I won't bore you. But I ended up buying this poster for $3,500 about nine minutes later.

And I'm screaming at the screen because I had violated all the basic rules of doing this, my own personal rules. And I violated them because suddenly I got very swept up in this idea of owning this poster, which is a bias you can get. And I called the dealer the next day.

And you're not supposed to do this. But I said, "I gotta know. Who was the idiot who wanted to spend $3,500 for a Black Sabbath poster? I gotta know." The dealer, who's a friend of mine, said, "Well, I'll tell you who the idiot was, Bob. It was you. You bought the poster, right?"

And I thought, "Yeah, that's right. Okay." Well, let me rephrase that. "Who's the other guy who wanted to buy the poster?" And he wouldn't tell me. Ultimately I found out it was a dealer in Hollywood. But the point of the story is that it reflects how you can easily be overcome by emotions, even when you know.

?I knew exactly what I was doing. I knew I was violating my own rules. I wasn't some mindless puppet being blown around by the wind. And there are many examples in the book where I myself violated my own rules. And that's how powerful these biases and these behaviors in your head can be.

?Even recognizing what they are can cause you to go astray. My favorite part of the book is talking about why the future is so difficult to figure out and why human beings act the way they do. Why, for example, do they not buy low and sell high? They buy high and sell low. So it's my favorite part of the book.

????????????????????????????????????? RUSSELL SHERMAN:

All right, Bob, how about a favorite restaurant? Is there one down by the exchange somewhere in Manhattan? Favorite restaurants in New York.

????????????????????????????????????? BOB PISANI:

For many, many years, Art Cashin (who was one of my mentors at UBS, he was the dean of floor reporters) and I met regularly, almost every night at Bobby Van's across the street. It was a steakhouse. That closed a few years ago. And there is not a lot of classic places left on Wall Street.

A good part of Wall Street has moved away. But there are two that are still left. One is Harry's at Hanover Square which celebrated its 50th anniversary a while ago. Harry is still alive and kicking. He's got a great new restaurant in West Palm Beach that he opened. That's a classic place.

The other is Delmonico's which is the oldest restaurant in America, and after three or four years of being closed, just recently reopened with a new chef, same old management, this wonderful group of people, in one of the most sexy old-school dining rooms in the United States. So I would rank Harry's and Delmonico's as my two favorite places.

????????????????????????????????????? RUSSELL SHERMAN:

All right. One final question, Bob. It's our headline question. Everyone likes thinking about headlines. You've had a terrific career. Give us the headline on your career.

????????????????????????????????????? BOB PISANI:

Yeah. I think Shut Up and Keep Talking is probably the right way to describe exactly what my career has been. Keep going and don't stop until somebody tells you to stop.

????????????????????????????????????? RUSSELL SHERMAN:

Perfect. Bob Pisani, everyone. Bob, that was a lot of fun. Appreciate you joining us.

????????????????????????????????????? BOB PISANI:

Russell, thanks so much for having me here. It's been great reminiscing with you. I love talking about journalism. I love talking about the New York Stock Exchange. And I love talkin' about my wonderful career at CNBC.

????????????????????????????????????? RUSSELL SHERMAN:

That's Bob Pisani. And that's gonna do it for this episode of Press Profiles. Remember you can find all the episodes of Press Profiles at Pressprofilespodcast.com or subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever it is you get your podcasts. We also post the transcripts on LinkedIn. So make sure to sign up for the Press Profiles newsletter. Thanks again. And see you next time.

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