There were two qualities about the mutual funds of the 1920s that made them extremely speculative. One was that they were heavily leveraged. Two, mutual funds were allowed to invest in other mutual funds.
If you go back to the time of J.P. Morgan, the world of high finance was completely wholesale. The prestigious investment banks on Wall Street appealed exclusively to large corporations, governments, and to extremely wealthy individuals.
Because of the love affair between the American public and the stock market, it is possible for entrepreneurs, technological visionaries and inventors of every sort to get financing.
Hamilton had a certain social versatility, and in a way, that is understandable because he's someone who rises up from the lowest rungs of society and then scales the top. And he gets to know people from every strata along the way.
I was quite bowled over by Isabel Wilkerson's masterly saga, 'The Warmth of Other Suns.'
I'm sure there are many more people who can identify with failure and hardship in life than with the success of an Alexander Hamilton or a John D. Rockefeller.
