Understanding the Past to Forecast the Future

Mark J. Higgins, CFA, CFP®

Financial Historian, Author, and Speaker on Using History to Decipher Financial Markets

Buy The Book Schedule Mark To Speak

Best Book in “Finance” at 2024 New York City Big Book Awards

Best Book in “Business: Personal Finance/Investing” at the American Book Fest’s “Best Book Awards”

Bronze Medal in “Personal Finance/ Retirement Planning/Investing” in 2024 Axiom Book Awards

Highlights

March 18, 2026

The Music Has Stopped in Private Markets

This article explains why private markets have suffered several decades of excess investment, why investment continues despite the diminished prospects, and why semi-liquid funds have triggered a reversal.

September 07, 2025 | Articles

Wall Street Journal: History of the New York Stock Exchange

This article is part of the Wall Street Journal’s USA 250 special series, which commemorates the 250-year history of the United States.

October 18, 2025 | Webinars

Bogleheads: Higgins/Bernstein Fireside Chat (coming soon)

Bill Bernstein and I discuss topics such as U.S. debt levels, Federal Reserve policies, and speculation in private markets.

October 24, 2024 | Articles

A 45-Year Flood: The History of Alternative Asset Classes

Efforts to ‘democratize’ private markets assume that a alternative asset cycle is just beginning. But history demonstrates convincingly that a 45-year cycle is in a dangerous late phase.

Why study financial history?

“There is no better teacher than history in determining the future…There are answers worth billions of dollars in a $30 history book.”

-Charles T. Munger Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway

Failure to understand it is costly…

“There can be few fields of human endeavor in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance. Past experience, to the extent that it is part of memory at all, is dismissed as the primitive refuge of those who do not have the insight to appreciate the incredible wonders of the present.”

-John Kenneth Galbraith, Economist

Few investors understand financial history…

“There are no investors and no senior policymakers I know—and I know many and I know the best—who have any excellent understandings of what happened in the past and why.”

-Ray Dalio Investor