Spencer Jakab

Personal Writing

Travel

Exploding TVs, Exploded Chicken

The year I graduated from high school, before I took my first class in the dismal science, I got a memorable economics lesson. That winter I visited Communist Hungary, where my parents grew up. Unlike my previous trips, I was old enough to explore on my own and I spent hours walking around Budapest. I…

Work

I Picked the Wrong Month To Stop Sniffing Glue

Back when I was in elementary school in the late 1970s, what my friends and I wanted to be when we grew up came up often. The number one answer by far was “photographer for Playboy,” followed by drummer for KISS. A few degenerates wanted to be lawyers. Now that I’m middle-aged, I understand that…

Travel

Balaton Memories

Growing up in the U.S., your idea of a beach vacation may have been sunny Florida or something more modest like The Jersey Shore. In communist Hungary, the nicest place to go was “Balaton.” It’s a lake, but no ordinary one as far as Hungarians, or the hundreds of thousands of East Germans who also…

economics

My Mom Was a Billionaire

Here’s what that taught me I’m the target of good-natured ribbing in my upper-middle-class New Jersey suburb for my spending habits. My wife’s friends told her they’ll pass on going on vacation with us because I’m too cheap and would probably take a bus from the airport, pack sandwiches, and stay at budget hotels. Guilty…

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About Me

I write Markets A.M., the Wall Street Journal’s investing newsletter. Before that I was Global Editor of the WSJ’s Heard on the Street column. I’ve written two books and I used to run an emerging markets stock research team at a big investment bank.

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