David Teeters
The ABCs of Modern Capital Markets

Research and Publications

A six-paper macrofinancial empirical analysis of 18th-century Britain, built on the FLB dataset.

§ 01

Current paper

Just presented · EHA 2026 · St. Louis

Alpha: Information, Networks, and Investor Returns

Evidence from the Universe of Named British Financial Market Participants, 1752–1827.

Who made money at the origins of modern capital markets? Wealth and skill matter; networks matter more. Using the FLB dataset, this paper constructs the first cross-sectional distribution of lifetime individual portfolio returns for any historical market. Individual alpha is measured against a newly-constructed cross-asset benchmark, then decomposed against two novel joint strategies: network centrality from counterparty trading relationships, and informational advantage from the price impact of trades (Kyle, 1985). Two case-study extensions follow: Ricardo and Rothschild as paths to the right tail, and the Old Bailey criminal proceedings as an independent test of network advantage.

Download poster (PDF) ↗ Draft (SSRN) ↗
§ 02

The six papers

α

Alpha — Information, Networks, and Investor Returns

Cross-sectional distribution of individual investor performance, 1752–1827.

Presented · EHA 2026
β

Beta — Cross-Asset Pricing at the Origins

Value, momentum, and carry extended to the beginning of modern capital markets.

In draft
Γ

Gamma — Volatility, Liquidity, and the First Safe Asset

Liquidity spirals, volatility, and the emergence of secondary markets.

In draft
Δ

Delta — The Fiscal Transfer Reinvestment Channel

Household marginal propensity to reinvest: a TANK model calibrated to 18th-century Britain.

Presented · July 2026
ε

Epsilon — Pricing Safety and the Origins of the Safe Asset

Cross-asset discount-rate decomposition and consolidated annuities.

In draft
Ω

Omega — A Finance-Led Endogenous Growth Model

Financial market deepening and economic growth in 18th-century Britain.

In progress
§ 03

The FLB dataset

Image slot — greyed-out AC27 ledger page (16:9). See IMAGES.md.
Financial Lives of the British · Public release 2031

Complete market microstructure at the origins of modern capital markets

The FLB dataset uses investor lifetime transactions and portfolio returns as its unit of analysis. Every trade, every named market participant, from 1698 to 1827.

Built through a bespoke, open-source HTR / VLM transcription pipeline over ~2,000,000 manually-digitised images from six London archives. The pipeline runs at ~95% character accuracy; a double-entry accounting frame with formal footing oracles closes the universe and yields a highly over-specified dataset.

50,000,000 Transactions
500,000 Named investors
2,000,000 Manuscript images
Image slot — B&W 18th-century woodcut / engraving (3:4). See IMAGES.md.

The dataset is developed under the Historical National Insurance (HNI) Number Project — a persistent unique-identity axis for every named market participant, designed for durable linking with future historical micro-datasets.

§ 04

Publications

Featured citation · Financial Times
"Re-marking… to current market value would mechanically deleverage the US balance sheet."

Quoted by name in "Gold glitters as the unimaginable becomes imaginable," Gillian Tett, Financial Times, 7 February 2025 — on Treasury Secretary Bessent's strategy to monetise the asset side of the US balance sheet.

Read at FT.com ↗  ·  Archived ↗

Articles

The "Mar-a-Lago accord": a renewed era of dollar diplomacy

IESE Insight · November 8, 2024

Published four days after the 2024 US election. One of the earliest public uses of the phrase "Mar-a-Lago accord"; subsequently taken up in analyses by the Council on Foreign Relations, TD Economics, East Asia Forum, and the American Enterprise Institute, and addressed by Gillian Tett in the Financial Times.

Read at IESE ↗  ·  Archived ↗

Funding the Golden Age of America

IESE Insight · January 29, 2025 · Syndicated by Forbes India

Published on the ninth day of the second Trump administration. Frames the funding challenge behind the "golden age" strategy — the secular decline in interest rates, sectoral balance-sheet leverage, and the asymmetry between Wall Street and Main Street in the outgoing model.

Read at IESE ↗  ·  Archived ↗

Shock as Strategy: Making sense of Trump's first 100 days

IESE Insight · April 30, 2025

A 100-day assessment of the second Trump administration's economic strategy, connecting tariff shocks, geopolitics, and the trade architecture back to the underlying financial-market thesis.

Read at IESE ↗  ·  Archived ↗

[M.Res dissertation title]

M.Res · Economic History · LSE · [Year] · Distinction

[Placeholder abstract or one-line description.]