Robert Lovett
Robert Lovett worked with international business and industry in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1941, he became the assistant secretary of war for air and held this post until 1945. He resigned then and resumed his banking career. Lovett returned to government service in 1947 as undersecretary of state. As defense secretary, Lovett initiated a coordinated department-wide defense budget. He returned to banking when President Truman left office in 1953. During the Kennedy administration, Lovett served as a presidential advisor and continued to sit on numerous high-level committees through the 1960s.
Wrote a landmark essay in the Saturday evening Post on April 3, 1937 against investing
- Wrote to warn the public against investing
- Attempted to show the public that investing didn't work
- Showed that various portfolios from 1901 onward had all lost value (or were even) by 1936
- Serves as a cautionary tale to making generalizations from recent experience
- He wrote this essay during the great depression when prices were depressed
- He only focused on recent investment losses - did not think about low valuations, the future or longer time horizons
- This instance serves as a good example to why quantitative analysis can fail.