Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/62198
keeping an Business anchor Maria Bartiromo closely watches the corporate world to learn what makes the markets move— and she encourages business students to sift through massive amounts of information to arrive at core truths. m wants. And she's taken this quest for knowledge to the heart of Wall Street where, as an anchor for CNBC, she follows the stock market on an almost minute-by-minute basis. At the cable news network she has several roles, including m aria Bartiromo has the mind of an analyst and the instincts of a reporter. Like any good jour- nalist, she understands how to dig for infor- mation, how to cultivate sources, and how to frame questions to get the information she basic formula of sorting "news" from "noise" when they study the stock market and other key corporate drivers. She offers additional nuggets of advice here as she explains what new graduates need to know before they enter the working world. 18 BizEd JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2003 understand how the market works and make informed deci- sions on how to invest personal money. Her 2001 book, Use the News, clearly and comprehensively explains how the stock market works—what the numbers mean, why the market responds to news, and who affects the economy. In the book and on the job, she emphasizes how important it is to sepa- rate true news from superfluous noise so that investors are not deflected from paying attention to the critical events unfolding in the marketplace. Business school students and educators can follow her money managers, or analysts, she says, the media really acts as a liaison between investors and corporations. "The media has a responsibility to report what is going on in business, giv- ing investors the opportunity to hear both sides of each story so they can make their own decisions," she says. Bartiromo believes that anyone can gather the resources to producing and hosting "Market Week with Maria Bartiromo" and anchoring segments of "Street Signs" and "Market Wrap." She was the first journalist to report live from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on a daily basis. Whether reporters present interviews with executives, by Sharon Shinn photos courtesy of CNBC Advances in technology have made market informa- tion available to all investors. A number of business schools have taken advantage of that technology by building virtual trading rooms on their campuses. If you were teaching a class set on one of these mock trading floors, what would you want students to learn? It's important for students to be skeptical. They need to make sure they have a full understanding of what they're looking at—a full understanding of the industry, of the com- pany, of the players, of the market opportunity—in order to make really informed decisions. They should ask themselves the "what if" questions. "What if we go to war? What if the market opportunity is gone in five years?" That's important. I would also tell students that while the market can be easy to understand, it's important not to assume that this cycle is the same as the last cycle. Even a very realistic campus trading floor can't repli- cate the excitement of being at the New York Stock Exchange. What do you think is the biggest shock to people who've just earned their business degrees when they go to Wall Street for the first time? As competitive as school has been, work is ten times more competitive. When you're in the workplace, you only have a few opportunities. You don't have a lot of chances the way you have in school. For example, in school, you can catch up if you miss a few classes. In the workplace, things are so com- petitive that there are two or three or four people who would like your job. So you need to know your subject, and you need to be aggressive. It's important to love what you do, work incredibly hard, and always do the right thing. Not try to do the right thing, always do the right thing, because the decisions that you make in life will follow