Wealth Management

In the late 1940s, engineer Bill Fair and mathematician Earl Isaac met while working at the Stanford Research Institute, the legendary post-war industrial thinktank. The two of them developed an algorithm, using a credit scoring system, that helped predict the chances that a borrower would repay a loan. In 1958 they founded Fair, Isaac and Company and soon began pitching their scoring system to financial institutions.1 Fast forward 30 years. The company shortened its name to what its customers were calling it, FICO, and was well on its way to becoming the standard measure for consumer credit worthiness—used for everything from credit cards to mortgages. Today, credit bureaus (also called credit agencies) collect data relevant to your risk as a …

We just witnessed the biggest 1-day point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s (DJIA) history. However, it’s not the biggest percentage drop to occur; it doesn’t even break the top 50. Remember black Monday in 1987, the Dow lost 508 points, that’s a 22.8% crash. The DJIA fell 1,175.21 points, or 4.6%, to 24,345.75. The other major indexes dropped about the same percentage. What does all of that mean? Too often we talk about the market as this nebulous term, an all-encompassing adjective when discussing fluctuation. I would like to take a moment to talk about what this drop means. Nothing. The recent down turn in the DJIA doesn’t mean that much in the grand scheme of things. Let’s …

Mayer Amschel Rothschild, the founding father of international finance, is reputed to have said, “Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws!”1 Money and power are inextricably entwined. Most often it seems like those with the money ultimately decide who will be in power. Which makes the idea of a currency that cannot be manipulated by a government, or controlled by a central bank, a very popular one. In 2009, this libertarian ideal became a reality with the introduction of bitcoin. Purportedly developed by Satoshi Nakamoto (now regarded as a pseudonym), this so-called “cryptocurrency” allows you to pay for things without the involvement of a third-party broker, like a …