Why SkyBridge Capital Founder Anthony Scaramucci Resurrected A TV Classic

When Louis Rukeyser hosted "Wall Street Week," investors listened. They eagerly tuned in to gain fresh, valuable insights that were painfully absent from other sources.

The show was cancelled roughly a decade ago, leaving a void for many that could never be filled by another program. This inspired SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci to resurrect "Wall Street Week."

"There's a number of different reasons why I wanted to bring the show back," Scaramucci told Benzinga. "I always thought the most interesting conversations at the SALT Conference were what I would call B2B conversations – a money manager talking to another money manager, a scientist talking to another scientist, that sort of a thing."

Scaramucci spoke fondly of Rukeyser, noting that he was an analyst who became a journalist.

"And then he started that show," said Scaramucci. "If you look at the old tapes, it's a B2B conversation – a business person to a business person. It's not a B2J conversation. I thought it would be very interesting to redo that format and see if business people would respond to that B2B conversation."

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Where Are The Insights?

Scaramucci has a number of goals for "Wall Street Week," but he primarily wants to help his viewers.

"One major mission statement for the show is to try to get viewers who have been hurt in the financial crisis – are suffering from some post traumatic economic stress syndrome, if you will – to recognize that they've got to take control of their own business and their own investing," Scaramucci added. "And they can come to the show…for educational value [and] understand what's going on."

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Advice From Jeff Gundlach

Scaramucci said that Doubleline Capital founder Jeff Gundlach came on the first show and spoke about the looming junk bond crisis.

"Why does that matter to viewers? Well, $17 billion+ of viewers' IRA money is locked into the junk bond market either through mutual funds or ETFs that are associated with junk bonds," Scaramucci explained. "In that search for yields, if rates start to back up, the credit spreads between those bonds and, let's say treasuries, will start to widen. That could touch off a crisis in that industry, which could mean a big loss in principal for a lot of people – mom and pops, if you will – that are holding money in their IRA accounts."

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Scaramucci wants the resurrected "Wall Street Week" to provide accessibility and financial learning competency "to a large group of people" who can't get that from anywhere else.

"I want this show to focus more on the way companies perform as opposed to the way stocks trade," he said. "This is a value-oriented show as opposed to a day trading-oriented show."

Disclosure: At the time of this writing, Louis Bedigian had no position in the equities mentioned in this report.   Image Credit: Public Domain
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Posted In: BondsTop StoriesExclusivesMarketsTrading IdeasInterviewAnthony ScaramucciDoubleline CapitalJeff GundlachLouis RukeyserSkyBridge CapitalWall Street Week
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