• State street. Massachusetts investment trust. Parker Putnam and Nightingale / Incorporated Investors. Wellington in Philadelphia
• But something in the Lefèvre story touched a resonant chord in Ed Johnson’s soul. Through the Lefèvre lens, Johnson said, he saw Wall Street as a world in which it was every man for himself, no favors aske or given. You were what you were, not because you were a friend of somebody but for yourself. These thoughts, if uttered at the time, might have profoundly fright ened the older generation of Bostonians-for whom being “a friend of somebody” was the essential currency of a life built around the right schools, the right clubs, and the right philanthropic boards. Outwardly, at least, Ed Johnson conformed to social expectations.
• …Management believes in concentrating on fundamental and relative values rather than preoccupation with what the market is going to do
• [ Ed Johnson ] was an intensely analytical man…his friendly blue eyes look out at you from behind his glasses with flattering absorption…his hobbies were dutifully cited: extensive and eclectic reading – he loves to browse in a number of widely diverse fields such as the theory of popular music, dietetics and psychology – and travel, especially to the Midwest and the pacific coast
• [ in 1949 ] Ed Johnson was still not a prominent player in the mutual fund industry, but we was poised to become one. He had assembled his team of trusted advisers…and he and his three headed animal were saddled and ready to ride into the mutual fund stampede
• His comments on the psychology of crowds revealed a man in touch with himself. “All of us have inside us a part of the crowd;” he offered almost ethereal advice about “staying focused” as today’s self awareness gurus would say; “the present is really the only thing that anybody can actually use…there is not much you can do with the future. You can’t love it, you can’t taste it, you can only dream about it.” … in one memorable address, he described with great sincerity the attraction of being a professional investor. “We have the ability to change businesses, which the ordinary man in a particular business does not. This is one of the things that makes our business so unnatural, but also, very satisfying too. So fascinating is our business that we have difficulty holding very good men, because a man who can fairly consistently, on balance, make substantial money in securities is rare and he is coveted by the whole world. One of the things that may hold him, I think, is the fascination of the business of investing and the universality of it… “the stock market represents anything that anybody has ever hoped, feared, hated or loved. It is all of life. You leave that and you go to xyz bottling company, and the rest of your life is bottles”

• Joseph Kennedy. Pursued a career in banking but faced limitations associated with Irish / catholic background. Worked as a bank examiner instead to learn the ropes
• Hayden Stone. Securities underwriting. Film / entertainment
• Acquisition of FBO film. Cinema credit corporation. Christian minority. Encouraged children to stick together
• New York. Meritocracy (as opposed to Boston)

• “The greatest American fortunes were the result of investing in a growing business and staying with it through thick and thin.”
• Those who knew Rowe we’ll attribute this ability to his total focus on business, the stock market, and the underlying political, social and economic trends
• Durable growth and venture
• Pete Calhoun tells a story of knocking on Mr. Price’s door one day and there was no answer from within. Nevertheless, Pete wentz in, saw that Mr. Price was deep in study, and sat down in front of his desk Mr. Price didn’t look up. Pete kept sitting there. Finally, Mr. Price said “You know how irritating I find it when people come in at the wrong time?” Pete said he knew that. Mr. Price asked, “Is your watch working today?” Pete said that it was. Mr. Price said, “Do you know how annoyed I get when people ignore my privacy?” Pete said that he did. After several similar questions and answers, Mr. Price said, “Well then, would you please get out of here!” in a loud voice. Pete got up and went to the door. In living, he turned and said, “Mr. Price, you will be the last person in this building, and the building is on fire.” With that, Pete left. Mr. Price looked out of his office and saw that the firemen were indeed occupying the floor.

• Notable partners…Thomas Lamont. Henry Alexander.
• Morgan Guaranty. First significant merger
• Fred Whittemore. “father fred”
• kun loeb. dhillon read
• merrill lynch, solomon brothers, goldman sachs
• kun loeb. later absorbed by lehman brothers
• later, shearson lehman
• MS. Apple. Hitachi
• Greenhill MS M&A.
• First Boston. parella wasserstein
• Eric Gleacher. lehman kun loeb
• trading. issuers king

• [ Only in America ] can “any man’s son may become the equal of any other man’s son” (Frances Trollope)
• “What Hath God Wrought” – message of Samuel Morse’s first telegram
• Greenspan cites Horace Mann, noting that Mann viewed “education as the grand agent for the development or augmentation of national resources, yet it measures the efficacy of every other means of aggrandizement, and is more powerful in the production and gainful employment of the total wealth of a country than all other things mentioned in the books of the political economist. Education is an antecedent agency ; for it must enlighten mankind in the choice of pursuits, it must guide them in the selection and use of the most appropriate means, it must impart that confidence and steadiness of purpose which results from comprehending the connections of a long train of events, and seeing the end from the beginning, or all enterprises will terminate in ruin.”
• Pushing to the front
• Monetary history of the United States
• FDRs NRA. Failure.
• Pig slaughters to boost prices
• Post ww2 Tariffs 36% in 1944 to 11% 6 years after Johnson. Medicare Medicaid. Low rates tax cuts high spending Nixon. Price reviews. Rumsfeld. Cheny
• Carter deregulation. Volker
• Reagan. Economy. Philosophy. Psychology. Psychopath Nixon. Dreary carter. Unions. Volker.
• Inflation. Tax. Top rate and capital gains. Deregulation. Coolidge. Debt free ncreases. Tax cuts didn’t work.
• Clinton. Eisenhower. Blue collar left behind populist. Capitalist fruits for losers. Fiscal conservatism. Globalization. Junk bonds. VC. Education. Immigration. Legal. LLC. Jack Welch.
• Mutual funds. Overseers. Erisa. Pension funds.
• Lombard Street 1873
• Growth of entitlements. Age. Auto pilot vs discretionary expenses. Non war driven debt.
• Regulation page length.
• It has always been easier to bemoan make the case for ending injustice or raising minimum wages than promoting economic dynamism. Cameras capturing destruction. Logic of collective action
• Banks investment banks and hedge funds allocating capital in to the most productive industries. Capital is the most nimble version of creative destruction. Holding on to dying industries offset by entitlements.
• Sweden. Defined contribution. Pension shut off. Retirement age. Severe under funding in USFinancial fragility. Capital reserves. Partnerships. Risk to shareholders rather than tax payers. Shadow banking?

Reminder to self: best outcomes are derivative of repeatable interactions.

Via Adam Grant Ted Talk: The surprising habits of original thinkers
source: Aaron Kozbelt

Concepts: Physiology of Stress

• Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS): basis of fight or flight response, releasing adrenaline and nonadrenaline, priming the body for physical activity (which also shuts down proteins involved in fighting viruses)
• Stress in children leads to eosinophils, creating mucus, constrict airways and result in a shortness of breath
• Cortisol: higher production with a lack of certainty over what the future holds

Source: Nature Neuroscience