Larry Wachtel, 77, 'Voice of Wall Street'

Larry Wachtel, who died Sunday at 77, went by the moniker "The Voice of Wall Street." His Brooklyn-accented market commentaries, a daily feature on news radio until 2005, were a part of the city's sonic architecture. His trademark tagline, "Gather those rosebuds," added a touch of sentiment to the pursuit of money in a metropolis where finance is revered.

A senior vice president and financial analyst at Prudential Securities Inc., now Wachovia Corp., for more than four decades, Wachtel was a frequently quoted expert who specialized in translating Wall Street trends to laymen. In a hot market, he might tell investors to "break out the punch bowl and celebrate the activities of 'El Toro,' the bull."

A frustrated sportswriter who at one point early in his career worked for the Daily Millstock Reporter, Wachtel covered the markets with the patter a sports commentator might use. "Praise the Lord and pass the digitalis," he once broadcasted of a volatile market. "This market has more moves than a Dr. J slam-dunk, and each one is a heart stopper."

The son of a garment worker and a native of Brooklyn, Wachtel attended Samuel J. Tilden High School and majored in journalism at Long Island University. He went to work for Bache & Co. in 1960 as an editor of its investment news service for a $95 a week. He eventually moved into writing market letters for investors, and then, in 1975, began making a daily broadcast for Bache on radio station WMCA. Two years later, the show moved to WINS.

The radio broadcasts, five a day for most of three decades, were based in part on newsletters he continued to write for Prudential after it merged with Bache Halsey Stuart Shields Inc. in 1981. "I was straight for the first two years in radio," he told the Wall Street Journal in 1982. "After a while I got the feel for it." He added, "Now I've created a monster."

"It's the biggest manhunt since Bonnie and Clyde," he once broadcast when Wall Street seemed to be anticipating a Federal Reserve Board discount rate cut. He added that it "brings to mind other seekers of the truth — Don Quixote, Diogenes, Burt Reynolds."

Even his own mother sometimes was baffled. "I enjoy listening to you," she once told him, according to the Wall Street Journal article. "But I can't understand what you're saying."

Stricken by a heart attack, he had continued to exercise and write until his death. He "semi-retired" in 2005, but still did guest spots on WINS and wrote a monthly finance letter for Wachovia.

In the November 30 edition of the letter, posted to Wachovia's Web site, he wrote, "Conditions remain dicey and the key question is not whether we have suddenly transitioned into a brave new world but whether a bottoming process has begun now that we have absorbed the first 10% correction in five years." Anticipating the end of the year, he also wrote, "Time flies even when you are not having fun."

Lawrence Wachtel

Born July 2, 1930, in Brooklyn; died December 2 at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, N.Y. Survived by his wife of 47 years, Iris, a son, Philip, and two grandchildren.