Rush-Hour Rhymer Keeps Philly Posted
He’s the doyen of the Dow, the Wordsworth of Wall Street, the man who’s spent nearly two decades entertaining rush-hour radio listeners with his offbeat analysis of the stock market. And he’s got a killer sign-off that has made him the most recognized business analyst in Philadelphia.
He’s Fred Shuuuhhhrrrrman.
“Little kids say it. Big kids say it. Waitresses in Chinese restaurants say it. Everybody says it,” said Sherman, who several times a day takes to the microphone at all-news KYW-AM to deliver rambling, rhyming run-on sentences while trying to make sense of earnings reports, economic indicators and the ups and downs of the Dow.
“Welcome to the wacky world of Wall Street,” he told listeners recently in his gravelly New York accent. “It’s a Mickey Mouse market, and Disney’s report will not make it any more understandable.
On another day, when the market is tanking: “Don’t panic! We are not on the Titanic!”
When the market’s up, he’s gleeful: “It’s green across my screen!”
Sherman, a vice president and senior economist for Sovereign Bank, says his job is to make business news palatable to a mass audience. His boss, KYW general manager Roy Shapiro, compares him to the late sportscaster Howard Cosell, and, like Cosell, Sherman inspires love and loathing.
“We get, ‘Throw the bum out’ and ‘He’s the greatest in the world,’ ” Shapiro said.
Not bad for a guy who had no broadcasting experience, or even much of a background in finance, when he walked into KYW’s offices 17 years ago.
Sherman, 76, sold sofas for 35 years and eventually became majority owner of a Reading-based furniture manufacturer. Diamond International Furniture prospered, ringing up millions in annual sales. Sherman flew his own plane to plants in Georgia, Illinois, Texas and California.
But Diamond’s fortunes plunged along with the economy in the late 1970s and early ‘80s. Sherman decided it was time to get out, and he closed the business.
He was 59 and in debt. Looking for a new career, he briefly considered insurance before a friend steered him to the brokerage business. He got a license to sell stocks and bonds.
Sherman began listening to KYW and its twice-hourly business reports while driving from his home in Reading to his office in Philadelphia.
“I would hear them say, ‘Stocks are up and stocks are down, and bonds are up and bonds are down, and the European market is up and the European market is down.’ ” he said. “It was boring, dry, dull.”
Sherman thought he could do it better, and he said so in a letter to KYW’s managers, who invited him to the station to talk about his ideas.
“I said I thought I could make business news entertaining, educational, understandable and humorous and fun. They said, ‘No, you can’t do that with business news.’ Well, we did it with business news,” Sherman said.
Shapiro said he took a chance on Sherman because “it’s what we’re supposed to do. Without risk, there’s little success.”
Sherman began delivering a single afternoon report. Soon he was put on morning drive time. Before long, Sherman was appearing throughout the day and night, both live and on tape.
And doing the ear-catching sign-off.
“I never really thought about it much until other people thought about it,” he said. “It’s almost an embarrassment because it’s the first thing that people say to me, and it’s hard for me to do when I’m not ready to do it.”
When he’s not on the air, Sherman schmoozes Sovereign clients, speaks to business groups and raises money for charity. He turns 77 in January, but he’s not retiring any time soon--”about two years after I die,” he quipped.
In fact, Sherman recently landed two more broadcasting gigs--a new weekly talk show on WPEN-AM and a weekly appearance on the local NBC affiliate. He’s hoping to get a syndication deal and is also writing an autobiography.
As if that weren’t enough, his year-old investment Web site--www.fredsherman.com--has 1,500 paid subscribers, although he says he doesn’t make any money on it.
Still, Sherman says he doesn’t take himself too seriously, and neither should anyone else.
“Fred Sherman is never going to tell people early in the morning that things are going to be bad,” even when they are, Sherman said. “If I’m going to tell people it’s going to be bad, I’m going to tell it to them in a way that makes it sound nice at least.”
