Friday, April 15, 2011

Joe Battipaglia

As most of you are well aware, yesterday the world of investing lost an exceptional investment professional, Joe Battipaglia. For me, I lost a friend.

It was in the late 1990s when I began producing and conducting market forecast events for NYSSA that I had the pleasure of first interacting with Joe. As a participant at my market forecast events and later as a guest on my podcast service ("Beyond the Sound BIte"), Joe was never dull nor without a forceful point of view. Matching his impressive physical presence, Joe's intellect always came with a provocative point of view, none more on display than the time he launched into his Libertarian perspective on the economy, the markets, and the financial services industry at my CFA Society of Orlando's Market Forecast dinner in early 2009. Unfiltered Joe was a sight to behold.

What I remember most about Joe, however, was his kindness and generosity. As David Gaffen at Thomson Reuters quoted me yesterday, "Besides the obvious physical attributes of looking like a linebacker, the best way to say it was that he was a very generous guy," said Vinny Catalano, chief investment strategist at Blue Marble Research.

"He truly was a gentle giant. He was a lot of fun to interact with both professionally and personally, and it's truly a large loss."

Perhaps my fondest memories of Joe was on the Forbes yacht a few years back (see the accompanying photos). As guests courtesy Wally Forbes and Vahan Janjigian and with Joe sporting a tan John Boehner would be proud of, we shared that warm early summer evening with drink and talk and friends.

He will be missed.

1 comment:

jwollak said...

I really like him. I looked for his appearances on KUDLOW. He was right about everything along with Gary Shilling. Everything he and Gary said was contradicted by Larry, but they were right. If I had listened to them I would have saved a lot of money. I don't know if Kudlow ever did a tribute to him. I might have missed it, but I record the program everyday and don't remember anything. If there ever was someone in the investment world that deserved a tribute it was Joe. It's a scandal of immense proportions the way the financial system was defrauded and has caused so much suffering to so many ordinary people. Joe never would have given high ratings to subprime mortgages and such. It's a mark of America's decline that we have so few regular Joe's left at the top. It doesn't bode well for the future.