Contributors
MONEY MORNING’S WORLDWIDE TEAM OF GLOBAL INVESTING EXPERTS:
Money Morning relies on a team with substantial international investing expertise to bring you the latest and best market intelligence from all around the globe. Here’s a quick introduction to the main members of our worldwide research team.
Martin O. Hutchinson is a Contributing Editor to both the Money Map Report and Money Morning. An investment banker with more than 25 years’ experience, Hutchinson has worked on both Wall Street and Fleet Street and is a leading expert on the international financial markets
At Creditanstalt-Bankverein, Hutchinson was a Senior Vice President in charge of the institution’s derivative operations, one of the most challenging units to run. He also served as a director of Gestion Integral de Negocios, a Spanish private-equity firm, and as an advisor to the Korean conglomerate, Sunkyong Corp.
But it was Hutchinson’s work in Bulgaria, Croatia and Macedonia that solidified his reputation as a true “hands-on” expert on the developing economies. As the U.S. Treasury Advisor to Croatia in 1996, he helped the country establish its own T-bill program, launch its first government bond issue, and start a forward currency market.
In February 2000, as part of the Financial Services Volunteer Corps, Hutchinson became an advisor to the Republic of Macedonia, working directly with Minister of Finance Nikola Gruevski (now that country’s Prime Minister). The nation had been staggered by the breakup of Yugoslavia – in which 800,000 Macedonians lost their life savings – and then the Kosovo War. Under Hutchinson’s guidance, the country issued 12-year bonds, and created a market for the bonds to trade. The bottom line: Macedonians were able to sell their bonds for cash, and many recouped more than three-quarters of what they’d lost – to the tune of about $1 billion.
Hutchinson returned to the United States, was named Business and Economics Editor at United Press International, and was able to jump-start the financial-news operation of that historic wire service. In October 2000, Hutchinson began writing “The Bear’s Lair,” a weekly investment column that appears on the Prudent Bear Web site.
Hutchinson earned his undergraduate degree in mathematics from Cambridge University, and an MBA from Harvard University. He lives near Washington, D.C.
Horacio R. Marquez is Emerging Market Specialist and Editor of the Money Map Report, and the Money Map VIP Trader.
A native of Argentina, Marquez has more than 20 years’ experience as an investment banker, and is a recognized expert on both banking and investing strategies, as well as on the emerging markets of Latin America. He is also recognized as one of the investment industry’s most-talented research analysts.
In fact, it was two stunning and well-publicized predictions he made in 1994 – while serving as a vice president of the Merrill Lynch Emerging Markets Fixed Income Group – that cemented Marquez’s reputation as one of Wall Street’s foremost experts on emerging-markets finance.
In the fall of 1994, at a time when Argentina was viewed as a highly favorable investment, Marquez correctly reasoned that a recent change in the country’s tax policy made a debt default inevitable. After making that controversial prediction public, Marquez reasoned that Mexico was on a similar path, and predicted the same outcome for that market. Both countries had major currency crises by the end of that year.
During his 25-year career, Marquez has held positions in such well-known financial firms as Touche Ross & Co., Barclay’s Bank, Swiss Bank, First National Bank of Boston and ADP Capital Management. He has also worked as a consultant, and as an institutional investment manager.
These experiences have allowed Marquez to develop and then refine a financial-analysis approach that has enabled him to repeatedly predict major market reversals, while also identifying top investment opportunities in both stocks and bonds.
Marquez earned his undergraduate degree in Business Administration, and a Master’s Degree in Industrial Administration from Pittsburgh’s prestigious Carnegie-Mellon University. He currently lives in Princeton.
William (Bill) Patalon III is the Managing Editor and Senior Research Analyst for Money Morning, and is also the Managing Editor for The Money Map Report. Before he moved into the investment-research business in December 2005, Patalon spent 22 years as a journalist, most of it covering financial news as a reporter, columnist, and editor that included stints with Gannett Co. Inc., and The Baltimore Sun.
Patalon has covered finance and investing, economics, manufacturing, the defense sector, biotechnology, and telecommunications. The companies he’s covered include Eastman Kodak, Xerox, Harley-Davidson, Caterpillar, Westinghouse Electric, Verizon, MedImmune, and Black & Decker.
His most-memorable interviews include: Former President Richard M. Nixon, General Electric CEO John F. “Jack” Welch, Forbes magazine publisher and former Presidential candidate Steve Forbes, and business-turnaround specialist and helicopter-industry pioneer Stanley Hiller Jr.
It was Patalon’s work covering Eastman Kodak Co., during the last half of the 1990s that solidified his reputation as one of the nation’s top analytical business journalists. With his award-winning reports on Kodak’s competitive travails, he consistently scooped his competitors in the national business media. His chronicles of Kodak’s turnaround efforts took him to China, Japan, Silicon Valley, New York, Washington, D.C., and even Hollywood.
Patalon’s work has appeared in Kiplinger’s personal finance magazine, USA Today, and The South China Morning Post, among other publications. A winner of approximately two-dozen journalism awards – including top honors from The Associated Press and the prestigious Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW). Patalon is also the co-author of the Prentice Hall book, Contrarian Investing: How to Buy and Sell When Others Won’t and Make Money Doing it. Before taking over as managing editor of Money Morning, he served as the editor of The Rebound Report, an investment newsletter focusing on turnaround stocks.
Patalon has a BA in Print Journalism from Penn State University, and an MBA in finance from the Rochester Institute of Technology. He lives near Baltimore.
Keith Fitz-Gerald is a Contributing Editor to Money Morning, as well as Investment Director of the Money Map Report and editor of the New China Trader. He is also a seasoned market analyst known for his accuracy, perspective and insight. He is also a former professional trader and licensed CTA advising institutions and qualified individuals, and he specializes in non-directional trading.
Fitz-Gerald started his first business and began investing the proceeds at age 15, but he officially launched his business career 19 years ago when he joined Wilshire Associates, the globally recognized financial consulting firm. He is currently Founder and Managing Member of Fitz-Gerald Research Publications LLC, an investment-research firm that publishes general investment research, commentary and analysis.
Having discovered key financial relationships that allow the markets to be modeled using complex systems based on Chaos Theory, Fitz-Gerald has been recognized as both a true pioneer of the form and an expert at using non-linear theory for market prediction, risk management and portfolio construction. That makes him one of the few people in the world who works exclusively with non-linear theory to predict the markets and forecast economic and financial events.
With his cutting-edge analysis strategies, Fitz-Gerald has actually called some of the key market events in recent history. When crude oil was trading at less than $20 a barrel, Fitz-Gerald predicted it would rocket to $50, $60 and even $70 a barrel - the record levels that crude oil has reached today. He was one of the only analysts who correctly predicted both the 2000 stock-market decline and its subsequent turnaround in 2003. In February 2007, during an appearance at the World Money Show in Orlando, he publicly predicted that China’s shares were in for a tumble: He notified his subscribers of his prediction a full four days before that country’s stock market plunged 9% in a single trading session. And most recently, in speeches and detailed articles that preceded the actual event by several months, Fitz-Gerald repeatedly warned of the credit crisis that’s only now roiling the global financial markets.
He was recently named a founding member of The Kenos Circle, a Vienna, Austria-based think-tank that identifies long-term economic and financial trends using the Science of Complexity, which is better known as “Chaos Theory.”
Fitz-Gerald holds a BS in Management and Finance from Skidmore College and an MS in International Finance - with a focus on Japanese Business Science - from Chaminade University. He and his family split their time between Portland, Oregon and Kyoto Japan.
