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Guests & Co-Hosts

Brendan Cournane

Brendan Cournane is a public finance attorney who joins Stocks & Jocks every Tuesday morning. 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.

Frank Fahey

Frank Fahey is a multidisciplinary professional with over 30 years experience in Options Trading and Sales Management with an exceptional track record of superior results in high risk-reward corporate and entrepreneurial environments. He has been a member of both the Chicago Board Options Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade. Frank is one of the few non-exchange employees certified to teach classes on advanced options strategy and options volatility on behalf of the Options Industry Council. Frank is consulting with an international agricultural cooperative to develop and implement strategies to use options to enhance hedging of their crops. He has worked a CBOE DPM, to develop Vega and gamma focused algorithms and methodologies for computer-based tools, and is the ad-hoc risk manager and consulting strategist for a private family hedge fund. Frank has developed presentations, seminars, webinars, and course content for the Chicago Board Options Exchange, the Options Industry Council, DiscoverOptions, OptionVue, PEAK6 University and CzechWealth (Prague).

Check out Frank’s weekly blog on the Stocks & Jocks website!

Matt Taibbi

Matt Taibbi is a writer and reporter for Rolling Stone. His latest book, ‘Insane Clown President: Dispatches from the 2016 Circus’ is a New York Times Best Seller. Taibbi’s career began in 1997 as co-editor of the English-language Moscow-based, bi-weekly free newspaper, The eXile, which was written primarily for the city’s expatriate community. In the U.S. media, Playboy magazine published pieces on Russia by Taibbi. In 2000, Taibbi published his first book, The Exile: Sex, Drugs, and Libel in the New Russia. In 2002, he returned to the U.S. to start the satirical bi-weekly The Beast in Buffalo, New York. He left that publication, but continued as a freelancer for The Nation, Playboy, New York Press (where he wrote a regular political column for more than two years), Rolling Stone, and New York Sports Express (as Editor at Large).

Taibbi left the New York Press in August 2005. It was shortly after his editor Jeff Koyen was forced out over issues raised by Taibbi’s column, “The 52 Funniest Things About The Upcoming Death of The Pope”. Taibbi became a Contributing Editor at Rolling Stone, writing feature-length articles on domestic and international affairs. He also wrote a weekly political online column, titled “The Low Post,” for the magazine’s website.

Taibbi covered the 2008 presidential campaign for Real Time with Bill Maher. He was invited as a guest on MSNBC‘s The Rachel Maddow Show and other MSNBC programs. He also has appeared on Democracy Now! and Chapo Trap House, and served as a contributor on Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Taibbi is an occasional guest on the Thom Hartmann radio and TV shows. He is a regular contributor/guest on the Imus in the Morning Show’ on the Fox Business network. Taibbi also wrote a column called “The Sports Blotter” for the free weekly newspaper, The Boston Phoenix, until September 2010. He covered arrests, civil suits, and criminal trials involving professional, college and at times, high school athletes.

His July 2009 Rolling Stone article “The Great American Bubble Machine” described Goldman Sachs as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money”. In financial and political media the expression “Vampire Squids” has come to represent the perception of the financial and investment sector as entities that “sabotage production” and “sink the economy as they suck the life out of it in the form of rent.

Financial scandals were frequently headlines in 2012, and Taibbi’s analyses of their machinations brought him invitations as an expert to discuss events on nationally broadcast television programs. In a discussion of the Libor revelations, Taibbi’s coverage was singled out by Dennis Kelleher, president of Better Markets, Inc., as most important on the topic and required reading.

In February 2014, Taibbi joined First Look Media to head a financial and political corruption-focused publication called Racket. However, after management disputes with First Look’s leadership delayed its launch and led to its cancellation, Taibbi returned to Rolling Stone the following October.

In 2008, Taibbi was awarded the National Magazine Award in the category “Columns and Commentary” for his Rolling Stone columns. He won a Sidney Award in 2009 for his article “The Great American Bubble Machine”.

David Andalman

Technical Analyst, DACS Research, PTI Securities & Futures

David Andalman joins the Stocks & Jocks show every Monday and Wednesday morning. He was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois and earned his bachelor's degree in Engineering from the University of Illinois, and then his MBA in Finance and Marketing from Indiana University. David traded for a year at the MidAmerica Commodity Exchange before starting the DACS Research Newsletters on commodity futures, which were the first all-technical research newsletters at the CME. Currently, he has been a senior wealth manager and portfolio strategist for over 23 years. He holds registrations in Series 3, 4 (Options Principal), 7, 55, 63 and is a registered Commodity Trading Advisor. Read more.