The "Best of Good Buys"

Back in the 1990s, I was a young financial journalist by day, working for a now-defunct program on PBS called Nightly Business Report.

But at night, I was busy with my own financial education.

See, I'd caught "the bug" - a passionate interest in learning how to invest and speculate in the stock market.

So after dinner with my wife, I'd sit down in front of my PC (yes, the kind that's a museum piece by now, with an Intel "x86" Pentium processor and big, boxy cathode-ray tube monitor).

Then I'd plug my home phone's wire into an analog modem (and wait while it made the usual hissing and buzzing sounds as it clunkily dialed into the internet) and get to work with my financial studies.

My earliest and most important mentor was a colleague and pioneer in stock market television named Paul Kangas.

Paul was my program’s business news anchor (alongside fellow anchor and show creator Linda O'Bryon).

Paul was already a legend, the "Walter Cronkite of business television" by the time I came along as a greenhorn business reporter in the early 1990s. Here we are - with my son Joseph, a toddler in 2008, on the set of NBR:

But Paul was also a former broker and trader who did quite well for himself as a commonsense investor. Thanks to his generosity of information and spirit, he passed on to me an encyclopedia's worth of knowlege and an insider's depth of understanding about Wall Street and the stock market.

For 30 years on PBS, he was the person who told several million national viewers each night if their stocks made money or not - and why.

And at the end of each program, he had his famous sign-off...

"I'm Paul Kangas, wishing you the best of good buys."

I always thought it was a great line because of it's double- meaning. It’s like saying “Farewell and godspeed tonight - and hope you make a lot of money in the stock market tomorrow.”

That’s the goal of the goodBUYreport as well.

Paul retired from the program in 2009 after 30 years on the air. He passed away in 2017.

So the name of my site is also a gigantic homage to Paul, whom I owe a huge debt of gratitude.

NBR's newsroom in its early days was sort of like a bowling alley - narrow, crowded with desks.

The managing editor's office was at one end. Paul's little cubbyhole office - just big enough for him, his ace researcher Johnny Streets, and a handful of computer terminals - was at the other end.

For me, Paul was a generous font of stock market insights and financial lore.

I would stock my head in his office and ask the questions of a stock market newbie - and receive patient, incredibly knowledgeable answers from someone who'd been investing his entire adult life.

I mean, one of Paul's best-known stories around the newsroom was how - in his days as a Coast Guard seaman on patrol in the Great Lakes region - his commanding officer thought so much of his stock ideas that he let Paul handle his stock portfolio!

After listening to Paul's well-considered insights for many years, I can see why his CO took that extraordinary step.

My goal with the goodBUYreport is much the same...

Pass on the same kind of timeless, worthy knowledge that helps us become better, more successful investors...

....and help achieve our financial goals in the process.

Best of goodBUYs,

Jeff