芝加哥大学的法玛的有效资本股票市场（efficient market）理论受到金融危机的巨大挑战，法玛用他的学生来做学术广告。

Return on principles

David Booth, MBA’71, built his investment career applying mentor Eugene Fama’s efficient-market research. Now he’s sharing the dividends.

By Lydialyle Gibson
Illustration by Allen Carroll

Just weeks after David Booth, MBA’71, arrived on campus in the fall of 1969—his Valiant convertible packed to the roof for the nine-hour drive from Lawrence, Kansas, to Hyde Park—he started thinking about leaving. “It wasn’t that I hated school,” he says. “I loved the whole thing. I loved the classes, I loved the work. I was in such a lucky spot.” Still, he says, “I just wasn’t sure I was cut out to be a professor.”

Academia had been his plan. With two degrees from the University of Kansas, a bachelor’s in economics and a master’s in business, he enrolled at the Graduate School of Business as a PhD candidate. In a few years, he figured, he’d return to Kansas and teach at his old alma mater. But by November, he was getting itchy feet. “I went to the director of doctoral programs, Tom Whistler, and said, ‘I know I’ve only been here a month, but I’m going home for Thanksgiving, and I don’t think I’m coming back.’” Whistler talked him out of immediately withdrawing (“You’ve got to stay out the first quarter at least…”). A year later, over Christmas at his grandparents’ house in Bronson, Kansas, a rural crossroads 112 miles south of Kansas City, Booth’s vexing uncertainty returned.