The Rothschilds: The Hidden Truth About Banking's Most Powerful Family

Recommendable!

The Rise of Edinburgh, Financial Empire

Recommendable! Indeed, the Scots often punch above their weight in history.

The Rise of Edinburgh, Financial Empire – AIER: The city of money no longer includes the best, the largest, or the most innovative banks, but finance still runs deep in Edinburgh’s blood.

Paul Codman Cabot Mutual Fund Pioneer

Trigger

Just read “Book Review: 'Passion for Reality,' by Michael R. Yogg/Cabot, a mutual-fund pioneer, independently forged an investment philosophy that closely mirrored Benjamin Graham's value investing.” (subscription required) dated 2/27/2014.

Harvard Magazine article about him here by the same author as the book above.

Mr. Cabot was also the financial wizard as long time treasurer of the Harvard University endowment.

Unfortunately, Wikipedia does not have an article about him nor about his State Street Investment Corporation, which I find peculiar.

Significance - Democratization Of Investment

The open-end mutual fund history basically begins with Paul Cabot in 1924 when he and two others founded State Street Investment Trust. Unfortunately, neither the review nor the article above really tell the story how he survived the Crash of 1929. According to this article, it appears that the new open-end mutual funds fared better during the Crash then e.g. closed-end funds.

We learn from the review that (emphasis added):

“it [State Street Investment Corp. of 1924] was a true mutual fund - known as an open-end fund - in which people could  invest and withdraw at any time. The idea was revolutionary in the early 1920s, ...”

“State Street was also a pioneer in research, carefully investigating companies before money into them, Cabot thoroughly analyzed annual reports, looked at the competition and visited the management of a company to size them up firsthand ...”

His lifetime success depended to some extent on what is now wrongly criminalized as insider trading.

I have a strong hunch there is more to be learnt about the financial history of the U.S. from this man.