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Investment Insights
321 Results-
![4th Quarter 2008 - False Dawn]()
1 Jan, 20094th Quarter 2008 - False Dawn
Islamic culture flourished, in music and literature (One Thousand and One Nights gave us the stories of Ali Baba and Aladdin, Scheherazade and Sinbad), astronomy and mathematics (aljabr, algebra, was invented here).
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![3rd Quarter 2008 - Retreat]()
1 Oct, 20083rd Quarter 2008 - Retreat
Michael Barclay de Tolly was neither French nor English, although his family traced its roots to the rnBarclay clan of Scotland. He was born in Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire, to nobility, and as expected, joined the Tsar's army when...
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![2nd Quarter 2008 - La Chute (]()
1 Jul, 20082nd Quarter 2008 - La Chute ("The Fall")
Louis-Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm, Baron de Gabriac, seigneur de Saint-Veran, Candiac, Tournemine, Vestric, Saint-Julien, and Arpaon, was old French aristocracy on both sides of his family. For centuries, the family ruled lands throughout...
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![1st Quarter 2008 - Panic]()
1 Apr, 20081st Quarter 2008 - Panic
Butte is a gritty city on the continental divide in western Montana. Amidst the beauty of the Rockies, rn the town is surrounded by strip mines, and while not exactly impoverished, there is nothing about Butte that hints at the enormous wealth...
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![4th Quarter 2007 - Despair]()
1 Jan, 20084th Quarter 2007 - Despair
Northwest of Philadelphia runs the Schuykill (pronounced Scoo-kulÂ) River. Before the Midwest was settled, before the San Joaquin Valley was irrigated, these rolling hills around this valley were among the most fertile ground in the world...
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![3rd Quarter 2007 - Commedia]()
1 Oct, 20073rd Quarter 2007 - Commedia
Easter Day in Florence, the year 1215: a woman flirted with a man, not her husband. He flirted rn back. The brothers of the offended husband declared a vendetta, thus beginning a nearly century-long feud. The Guelphs wore a red rose on the right...
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![2nd Quarter 2007 - Capitalism]()
1 Jul, 20072nd Quarter 2007 - Capitalism
Joszi (pronounced yo-shee, a boy's nickname) was born in Triesch, about 75 miles south of Prague in 1883 to a family that had lived in that valley for 400 years. His father, who ran a textile mill,rndied in a hunting accident when Joszi was four...
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![1st Quarter 2007 - Precession]()
1 Apr, 20071st Quarter 2007 - Precession
In a fashionable arrondissement of Paris lived a well known publisher who had made his reputation with an excellent multi-volume collection of the history of France. He was in poor health, and died when his son...
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![3rd Quarter 2006 - Dance!]()
1 Oct, 20063rd Quarter 2006 - Dance!
Jerry Rabinowitz was born in 1918 to Polish immigrants who ran a deli on the East side of rn Manhattan. A few years later, his dad, Harry, and HarryÃs brother opened the Comfort Corset Company (a bit of an oxymoron), and the family moved...
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![2nd Quarter 2006 - Breaking Wave]()
1 Jul, 20062nd Quarter 2006 - Breaking Wave
On the outskirts of the ancient capital of Edo (Tokyo) in 1760, a boy was born to the Kawamura family. His father worked as a mirror polisher for the Tokugawa Shogunate. The boy's given name was Tokitaro, but it was changed to Tetsuzo at the...
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![1st Quarter 2006 - Duke]()
1 Apr, 20061st Quarter 2006 - Duke
Teenage boys have been hanging out at beaches since, well, probably since there have been rn teenage girls and beaches. A hundred years ago, one such group of boys had dropped out of highrnschool to spend their days on the beaches of Waikiki...
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![4th Quarter 2006 - Lion's Gate]()
1 Jan, 20064th Quarter 2006 - Lion's Gate
Thomas Raffles was one of those extraordinary individuals who made the British Empire the BritishrnEmpire. He joined the British East India Company in 1805 as a clerk, but one with high ambitions for adventure.
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![4th Quarter 2005 - Balance of Power]()
1 Jan, 20064th Quarter 2005 - Balance of Power
Consider the map of Europe in 1812. From the Atlantic to the Urals, from the Baltic to the rn Mediterranean, Europe was French. Consider, too, the amazing events that led to this. In July 1789, the Bastile was stormed and the French Revolution began.
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![3rd Quarter 2005 - Conversion]()
1 Oct, 20053rd Quarter 2005 - Conversion
William Fisher, recently promoted to the rank of captain in the British Army, set out in 1840 with his new bride for Ceylon, where he was to take up the assignment as aide-de-camp to the governor. The following year, the first of their eleven...
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![2nd Quarter 2005 - Treasure Ships]()
1 Jul, 20052nd Quarter 2005 - Treasure Ships
Khubilai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, conquered China in 1279, thus creating the largest unified empire history has ever seen, stretching from eastern Europe to southeast Asia. It lasted barely a hundred years.
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![1st Quarter 2005 - Smoke and Mirrors]()
1 Apr, 20051st Quarter 2005 - Smoke and Mirrors
Rabbi Mayer Weisz was the son of a respected rabbi, but his family was mired in poverty when a rn son, Erich, was born in Bucharest, 1874. Four years later, the family emigrated to Wisconsin, where Mayer was to lead a small congregation.
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![4th Quarter 2004 - Crossroads]()
1 Jan, 20054th Quarter 2004 - Crossroads
For millions of years, the Mississippi River, the longest river in the world as measured from the source of its tributary, the Missouri, has flooded its delta region with the detritus drained from 31 states, creating an alluvial plain with the...
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![3rd Quarter 2004 - Sea Change]()
1 Oct, 20043rd Quarter 2004 - Sea Change
Joseph Rochefort had a perfectly uninspiring career. He enlisted in the navy in 1918, earned an rn ensignÃs commission, and was known principally as a lover of crossword puzzles. Stationed on the USS Arizona in 1925, he shared this love of crosswords.
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![2nd Quarter 2004 - Fractals]()
1 Jul, 20042nd Quarter 2004 - Fractals
Euclid was undoubtedly the greatest mathematician in history. His mathematical formulae and proofs define all the familiar shapes in one-, two- and three-dimensions: point, line and plane. Elements, rn written 2,300 years ago, remains...
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![1st Quarter 2004 - Trust Me]()
1 Apr, 20041st Quarter 2004 - Trust Me
Versailles is certainly a splendid monument to the glory of the Sun King, Louis XIV. Pictures cannot rn capture the magnitude of its magnificence, the overwhelming adornment of gold, silver and precious jewels on every wall, ceiling and piece...
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![4th Quarter 2003 - Liftoff]()
1 Jan, 20044th Quarter 2003 - Liftoff
In the spring of 1929, in the ancient Prussian city of Posen, a 17-year old boy stepped into the town's only movie theater to see the latest film by the acclaimed director Fritz Lang. Lang's 1927 classic Metropolis was perhaps the most influential...
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![4th Quarter 2002 - Tack or Jibe]()
1 Jan, 20044th Quarter 2002 - Tack or Jibe
Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's consort, thought it a splendid idea to organize a Great Exhibition as a showcase of England's power and glory. The nations of the world all sent emissaries and tributes to London that summer of 1851...
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![3rd Quarter 2003 - Balance or Power]()
1 Oct, 20033rd Quarter 2003 - Balance or Power
Dear Sirs: I have been interested in the problem of mechanical and human flight ever since as a boy I constructed a number of bats of various sizes. [I am] not a crank in the sense that I have some pet theories as to the proper construction of...
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![2nd Quarter 2003 - Cubism]()
1 Jul, 20032nd Quarter 2003 - Cubism
In a small town near Mlaga, Spain in 1884, a three-year old boy began scribbling. These were lines and shapes and spirals, and no one, even his proud father, a respected artist himself, believedrnthe boy had much talent. As he entered his teenage...rn
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