Overview

Paul Cabot (1898–1994) was an innovative mutual fund manager and executive known for his strong character, charismatic personality, and trendsetting financial achievements. Iconoclastic and rebellious, Cabot broke free from the Boston Brahmin trustee mold to pursue new ways of investing and serving investment clients. Cabot founded one of the first mutual funds-State Street Investment Corporation-in the early 1920s, campaigned against the corrupt practices of certain other funds in the late 1920s, and lobbied on behalf of key New Deal securities legislation in the 1930s. As Harvard University treasurer, he increased the allocation of the endowment to equities just in time for the bull market of the 1950s, and as a corporate director in the 1960s he campaigned against conglomerates' abusive takeover strategies. Having spent nearly two decades working for Cabot's company, State Street Research & Management, as an analyst, research director, portfolio manager, and chief investment officer, Michael R. Yogg is well positioned to share the secrets behind Cabot's extraordinary success and relate the life of an extraordinary man. Cabot pioneered the use of fundamental stock analysis and was likely the first to take up the progressive practice of interviewing company managements. His accomplishments all stemmed from his passion for facts, finance, and creative thinking, as well as his unbreakable will, facets Yogg illuminates through privileged access to Cabot's papers and a wealth of interviews.

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9780231167468

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Reviews

Passion for Reality is an intelligent and well-written account of the career of an important figure in the formation of the modern investment management business. -- Martin S. Fridson Financial Analysts Journal Paul Cabot created and led the first mutual fund. He didn't manage it; he led it -- a crucial difference. It takes exceptional leaders to create sound new forms of investing that are profitable for investors and not merely their creators. Reading this book had me asking, Who are the finance industry's next leaders, and where are they going to come from? -- Harry Markopolos, financial fraud investigator and author of No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller Passion for Reality is a special kind of social history, a piece of Harvard's history, a compelling biographical study, but above all a history of major financial developments. And it is a very readable book. -- Bernard Bailyn, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Harvard University Anyone who works in the mutual fund industry will want to read this compelling biography of Paul Cabot, a Boston Brahmin and cofounder of one of the first mutual funds. It is a window on the origins of mutual funds, a topic inadequately treated by other historians. Read about early stock pickers when markets were unregulated and sufficiently inefficient that outperforming was as easy as visiting a few corporations and asking questions. They there was the 1929 crash and Depression-era regulation. Cabot's life provides a front row seat. Highly recommended! -- Glyn A. Holton, author of Value at Risk: Theory and Practice This book is thoroughly researched, comprehensive, candid, elegantly written, and eminently readable. I applaud it as a vital link to returning the mutual fund industry to the high fiduciary standards that were once its hallmark. -- from the foreword by John C. Bogle, Founder and former CEO, the Vanguard Group

Passion for Reality is an intelligent and well-written account of the career of an important figure in the formation of the modern investment management business. -- Martin S. Fridson Financial Analysts Journal

Author Information

Michael R. Yogg, Ph.D., CFA, is trained as both a historian and investor. He holds three degrees in history from Yale University and Harvard University, and worked for more than three decades in the investment industry, including nearly two decades at State Street Research & Management and fifteen years at Putnam Investments. John C. Bogle is founder of the Vanguard Group, which is currently the world's largest mutual fund company. As a bestselling author of ten books, most recently The Clash of the Cultures: Investment vs. Speculation, and a financial innovator, he is recognized as the leading advocate for the interests of mutual fund shareholders in the United States.

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