Wealth managers: Looking for new clients?

Try calling on winners of the Nobel Prize, leading academics and other geniuses thinking deep thoughts. Said geniuses tend to be duds at investing. What's more, they may not even want to learn how to do it right.

So reports Peter G. Gosselin in his L. A. Times article (free registration required). Aside from revealing hot prospects for investment-management accounts, the article sheds light on the debate over diverting a portion of Social Security tax payments to private accounts. If even Harry M. Markowitz, the father of modern portfolio theory, couldn't think realistic thoughts about asset allocation in his younger days, where does that leave the average taxpayer?