Article April 21, 2014 Issue

Rethinking the pursuit of wealth

Paul Collins

Having spent my entire career in money management, I was interested in a poll conducted by Prudential Financial, which found that a majority of Americans (58 percent) had “lost faith in the market.” Despite the fact that this casts aspersions on my profession, I couldn’t help but understand, given the almost unprecedented volatility of financial markets over the past few years.

Most people know the reasons: insider trading, Ponzi schemes, collusion, market manipulation. Sadly, the list gets long. And each perpetrator appears to have the same motive—the pursuit of wealth.

I recently came across a thank-you note Mary Baker Eddy wrote to a Christian Science branch church in Colorado in which, as I see it, she turned this notion of pursuing wealth upside down—or maybe I should say right side up—and introduced the idea that substance can pursue us.