William Wallace Duncan

History of Financial Advice Collection. William Wallace Duncan, a one-time stockbroker on the London Stock Exchange, built a reputation as an outside broker on his authorship of yearly manuals on tramways from 1877 and on breweries from 1889. Though he had died by 1894, his business was carried on, under his name, by his associates, Henry Lowenfeld and A. Arnold Hannay. Under their stewardship, Duncans now moved into the financial education market, publishing a series of investment guides, the first of which was Duncan on Investment and Speculation. Explicitly targeted at inexperienced investors, it had a democratic message, that successful investment was possible for anyone willing to study the subject. Unlike many guides of the period which were padded out with anodyne and repetitive descriptive matter, this one is both entertaining and useful, with advice on subjects such as portfolio diversification, or “distributing capital in a scientific manner over various investments.” Ultimately, however, the guide was designed to encourage readers to speculate with Duncan’s. To this end, it contained repeated warnings against the immorality of letting capital lie fallow in the funds, coupled with a subtle blurring of the boundaries between investment and speculation, which were “twin sisters, and so nearly alike that it is almost impossible to discriminate between them.”… (mais)