Bartiromo - Investor Brief: A Thrilling Week

Maria Bartiromo

Week of June 20, 2010
The big story continues to be the health of the U.S. economy as investors try to make sense out of sometimes conflicting data. I still hear worries of a slow patch, and the market of course hates the uncertainty. Still, the S&P 500 and the Dow managed to finish last week in positive territory for the first time in seven weeks. Nasdaq couldn’t match that performance, finishing down 1%.

It was quite a week for me personally, as well. As you may have heard, I was in Chicago for the National Cable and Telecommunications Associations’ Cable Show, and Wednesday I was inducted into the Cable Hall of Fame. It was an incredible honor to be the first female journalist to join this illustrious group and just the second journalist, after my colleague Bernard Shaw. It was also an honor to be inducted along with Jeff Bewkes, Chairman and CEO of Time Warner.

As is often the case, it caused me look back at my career and the last 20+ years that I have been in broadcasting. I started out in this business covering “firsts.” My first big experience in cable was as a producer covering the first Gulf War in Iraq when Bernard Shaw was reporting from under the bed in his hotel room as the bombs began to fall in Baghdad.

That had a tremendous impact on me because it was the first time I really grasped the impact of covering and broadcasting events as they happened. That’s how I grew up in cable, and it gave me the conviction to move to another first: broadcasting from the floor of the NYSE and covering the financial news as it was unfolding.