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Guests & Co-Hosts

BRENDAN COURNANE

Brendan Cournane co-hosts the Stocks & Jocks show every Monday morning. He is also a public finance attorney licensed in both Illinois and Arizona. He has practiced law for more than 35 years acting primarily as counsel to issuers of municipal debt (bond counsel, underwriters’ counsel, bank counsel and special counsel). He has served in both the private and the public sectors, having been a partner in major U.S. law firms and as in-house counsel to such entities as the City of Chicago and Chicago Public Schools, as well as General Counsel to the Illinois Finance Authority, one of the nation’s largest issuers of conduit municipal bonds. Read more.

JOEL ELCONIN

Joel’s introduction to trading was in the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index futures pit at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Also, during his time at the CME, he was involved in Index Arbitrage as well as trading foreign currency futures and options. From 1994-1999 he was a proprietary trader for Olde Discount Corporation. Following his tenure at Olde Discount, he founded the Detroit office of Bright Trading, LLC. His responsibilities included trader recruitment, orientation and education as well as the day to day management of the office. He held this position office until 2003. Since 2003, Joel has been an independent trader researching and developing proprietary indicators and trading systems for the equities and futures markets. In 2007, Joel joined JC Trading Group as a Market Consultant and trading supervisor. He provides daily market commentary at www.premarketinfo.com. Joel obtained his Bachelor of Art in Political Science from the University of Michigan in 1985. Also, he is a graduate of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Continuing Education Program. He also holds his Series 7 and 63 licenses and is a licensed real estate broker.

MATT WEBER

Matt Weber is currently the Executive Producer, Update Anchor and starting Center Fielder for Stocks & Jocks. He is a die-hard sports fan (Cubs, Bears, Bulls and Iowa Hawkeyes) and has worked for WSCR-AM 670 The Score, 120 Sports Network and Chicago Sports Webio while also appearing on Comcast Sportsnet Chicago. Matt has covered the Chicago Bulls, Chicago Cubs and the Chicago Marathon as a field reporter and has interviewed some of the biggest names in sports and entertainment. Matt lives in the Bucktown neighborhood on the Northside of the city with his wife and dog.

HAL SNARR

Hal W. Snarr is the son of a third generation Idaho potato farmer who was raised in an ignoble but resolute Mormon household. His career is a result of a fortuitousseries of accidents.

Hal got his first taste for teaching after shining in Naval Nuclear Power School, but was not aware of what a Ph.D. was until he took Calculus I, II and III for fun at Idaho State University. A couple of years later he found himself teaching algebra and proving theorems in the master of science in mathematics program at ISU. Although he was having fun, he wanted to use mathematics in more meaningful ways. He discovered how to do this while taking mathematical economics at ISU. In this course, he gained an intuition of the eigenvalue. This set him on his present path. After all, wouldn’t you do the same if you had just learned that negative eigenvalues mean you are on the peak of a three dimensional surface because steps taken in thex and y directions are downward?

His unconventional journey gives him a unique insight into the cohorts he studies.Most economists were not raised by low-income single mothers who had to, on occasion, reluctantly use public assistance and purple money (old school food stamps). As a teenager, he also observed beer-for-purple money exchanges.

Between 2004 and 2013, Hal was taught economics and statistics at North Carolina A&T State University. In 2013, Hal accepted a similar position at Westminster College. He regularly teaches money and banking, macroeconomic principles, business statistics, introductory regression analysis, and labor economics. His research studies how welfare and other policies affect labor supply, marriage, fertility, migration, dependency, and poverty.

Hal’s hobbies include producing instructional videos for his YouTube channel, The Snarr Institute, and commenting on economic policy proposals and politics on Twitter and Facebook. He occasionally writes op-eds for PolicyMic and OpEdnews. He enjoys home improvement projects, vehicle repair, watching the news and movies, walking, attending church services, a good debate, and spending time and traveling with his family.