Rules of thumb
challenge complex
financial analyses
By Bruce Bower
Harry Marko witz won a 1990 Nobel Prize in economics for effi- ciently passing the buck — make
that bucks. He was honored for develop-
ing a mathematical formula that helps
investors maximize profit and minimize
loss in their portfolios. After an exhaus-
tive analysis of financial information,
Markowitz’s procedure allocates a per-
son’s stash of cash to an array of assets,
with more money going to better bets.
