Former fund manager Raoul Pal doesn’t believe financial television channels like CNBC and Bloomberg TV are providing viewers real value or even much useful programming, reports Julia La Roche of Business Insider.
The perceived lack of quality financial reporting is the main reason Pal decided to take matters into his own hands by founding Real Vision Television — an Internet-based subscription video service that will offer a library of innovative and relevant content on economics and investing.
Pal’s partners in his new enterprise include Grant Williams, the author of the newsletter Things That Make You Go Hmmm, UK advertising executive Damian Horner and fund manager Remi Tétot.
Of note, the launch of Real Vision Television comes as CNBC viewership hit a 21-year low last month.
Statement from Raoul Pal
“It’s a real mix of things; it’s somewhere between TED and Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) and The Economist,” Pal explained to Business Insider when discussing his new financial media enterprise in a recent interview.
“At its very core, I think we felt that people — general investors and the general public — were not getting access to open and honest discussion about economic and investment state-of-affairs,” Pal explained. “We think the world is kind of incredibly complicated right now, and people need to see a broader range of discussions to make their own decisions.”
He went on to say, “The good thing is because we know so many of these people, because we’ve been around so long, that they were willing to get on board with us and help us with our mission.”
In discussing the relatively inexpensive $400 price tag for the new service Pal said, “We want to make it affordable. That’s the very idea — the idea is not to be an exclusive service. It’s a way of educating a whole load of people in the way that they should be.”
More on Raoul Pal and Real Vision Television
Pal is a familiar figure in the global macro management sector.. He retired from managing money in 2004 at the age of 36. He has not retired, however, and is well-known among the most brilliant global macro investors in the world.
Back in 2012, Pal predicted a damaging string of sovereign debt defaults and “the biggest bank crisis in history.” Although this scenario did not comer to pass, Pal said in the interview that the sovereign debt dynamics were still a problem and that nothing had really been resolved.
Pal publishes the highly regarded The Global Macro Investor, a research newsletter read by the hedge fund types worldwide (Hayman Capital’s Kyle Bass once mentioned it in one of his fund’s letters). A subscription to Pal’s newsletter costs tens of thousands of dollars annually and the contents of the newsletter are almost never disclosed.
Real Vision Television is designed to provide more people access to Pal’s insights. The lineup will include interviews and discussions with research analysts, hedge fund managers, newsletter writers traders and others.
