Howard Bryan Bonham

Currently, I am finishing up my father's memoirs, and developing ideas for other books. Also, I am freelancing for Suite101.com online magazine and producing material for my Web site.

I have been locked into serious reading and writing most of my life. Beginning in high school, I studied journalism, which I continued in college, while serving as sports columnist of the college newspaper and sports editor of the alumni news magazine.

I also wrote general news stringers for daily newspapers, in the news-rich Washington, D.C. environs. My education was augmented by what seem like endless but valuable sessions with my father, a journalist and publisher who also wrote press releases, speeches, scripts and articles. He wrote speeches for three US presidents, including FDR's final nationwide address.

After editing a daily newspaper and the investment newsletter that became Standard & Poor's Weekly Outlook, I wrote investment reports and directed industry research for Wall Street firms.

In the 1990s, I operated Howard Bonham Research, an independent research firm in Houston, Texas. That opportunity arose because scandals of corrupt research on Wall Street had created a demand for independent opinions. I was very much off-Wall Street, yet advantageously located in the hubbub of oil and gas happenings in Houston. I published other industry reports as well.

When the bubble burst on Internet stocks and stocks in general in the 1990s, I completed and sold my investment and financial dictionary, and resolved to concentrate on freelance and creative writing. I set my muse free of stodgy writing, but discovered stodgy writing often pays more often and better.

I live in Maryland, a few miles from the Chesapeake Bay. The eastern shore is one of my favorite places; I go there as often as possible. After a career of writing structured reports on portfolios, companies and industries, I have broken free and am no longer a danger to the investment public.

However, I look forward to tackling investment topics again; my cowering MBA muse, whose pin-striped suit was taken to the cleaners in the recent financial crash, still hangs around, waiting for his good-as-new duds to be ready.

Biographical Notes:

Feature Writer/Investment for Suite101.com online magazine.

Author: "The Complete Investment and Financial Dictionary" (in print, Adams Media Corp.).

Principal: Howard Bonham Research, an independent investment research firm that published industry and stock reports.

Employment: senior securities analyst and industry research director of NYSE firms.

Education: University of Virginia, B.A. in economics; University of Oklahoma, graduate school; New York Institute of Finance, investment analysis and portfolio management programs; five-year study program preparing for Chartered Financial Analyst exams.

Awards: annual Graham Dodd Award for excellence in financial analysis and writing, presented by CFA Institute; annual Graham Dodd Scroll for runner-up in excellence in financial analysis and writing, presented by CFA Institute another year.

Professional affiliations: Certification as Chartered Financial Analyst; member CFA Institute.

Published writer: yes

Freelance: yes.