Stock Picking, Fifty Years Ago and Now

"Some facts will not come to us," reports this 1967 Merrill Anderson ad for U.S. Trust. "We hunt them out and bring them back – alive."

Today, stock pickers need not hit the road. The digital revolution offers access to zillions of facts in the form of big data, and quants use algorithms to massage the data and generate investment decisions.

"Prognosticators imagined a time when data-driven traders who live by algorithms rather than instincts would become the kings of Wall Street," The Wall Street Journal($) recalls. "That time has arrived." Quantitative hedge funds "are now responsible for 27% of all U.S. stock trades by investors, up from 14% in 2013,"

WSJ subscribers can view the anatomy of an investment algorithm here.

Mad Men Ads of 1970 (the Worst Was Yet to Come)

Watching the last half of Mad Men's final season? Reportedly the story picks up in 1970, a bad year that ushered in a worse decade.

How bad? It was the year the Beatles broke up. The 1970s brought long lines at gas stations, double-digit drops in the purchasing power of a dollar, and the worst stock market bust, in real terms, since the Great Depression.

The 1970s are remembered as the decade that taste forgot. For good reason. See ad at right. (To all who were offended by my 1970s' plaid suit, sincere apologies.)

Even the 1970 ads from trust companies seemed to lose their zing.

This US Trust ad is OK, I guess (I may have written it) but it falls far short of the psychological insights that Merrill Anderson's founder crafted. (Had to look up congenerics. They are companies in the same or similar industry that offer noncompeting products or services. Investopedia labels Citigroup's merger with Travelers Insurance, now undone, as congeneric.)

By 1970 Chase Manhattan's iconic nest eggs had been replaced by a mess of pottery:

Is there a museum that would have accepted such a collection in 1970? What about now?

More than a nest egg is missing from the ad. Chase's trust division has become the "planning division."

1964: The Ladies Who Invest

Of all the ads The Merrill Anderson Company created for U.S. Trust, this message from half a century ago probably was the most off beat.

Does the headline strike you as sexist or condescending? Remember that Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique had appeared only a year earlier, in 1963.

U.S. Trust was entitled to boast about advertising to women back in 1864. At that time married women in New York State had been allowed to own and control property for less than 20 years. (More on the evolution of laws granting property rights to female U.S. citizens here.) Most likely, women during The Civil War were compelled to take on more responsibility for family wealth.

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For all his copywriting skills, the founder of The Merrill Anderson Co. was not noted for his sense of humor. Wish I knew whose idea it was to sneak the dozing businessman into the illustration. 

1969: More Ads from the Mad Men Era

In the spring of 1969 Merrill Lynch joined the rush to promote hot new go-go stocks:

It used to be that practically all you needed to sniff out a growth stock was a good nose for technology. Xerox smelled good to some people. Polaroid smelled good to others. And sure enough, both rose higher than a soufflé at Pavillon.

Young and small was the way to go, Merrill Lynch figured, because "we wanted companies that could show dramatic gains in earnings. That’s a lot easier for Davids than for Goliaths."

Alas, go-go shares were about to collapse. Investors soon decided the only trustworthy stocks were the Goliaths, the Nifty Fifty.

US Trust must have sensed market uncertainty, for it reran one of its classic ads. Could any headline be more timeless?

Instead of spotlighting an affluent adult as usual, this Chemical ad features a kid. In current dollars the lucky lad's trust is worth way over $1 million. Would an ad calling attention to that much youthful good fortune prove problematic today? 

Marketing Wall Street to Mad Men

As Mad Men begins its last season (actually, its penultimate half season) brush up on the era with three ads from April, 1969.

By 1969 growth stocks had become a craze. So-called Gunslingers frantically traded speculative go-go stocks, creating avalanches of paper that overwhelmed brokers' back offices. Merrill Lynch ran this apologetic ad. "Paperwork, we've got it …. And, quite frankly, service problems, too."

The surge in growth stocks reflected real economic progress. Many a Salaried Man, including those in advertising and network TV, went from entry-level affluent to investment-management prospect. Merrill Anderson produced this ad for U.S. Trust, featuring a clever John Northcross illustration.

Not everyone approved of members of the Greatest Generation who became salaried men. Where was their get up and go, their entreprenurial spirit? Happily, many did launch businesses and some succeeded beyond their expectations. They were the target market for this Chemical Bank ad: