Credited with creating the first stock index fund in 1971, Mac McQuown was the owner of Stone Edge Farm, where he developed a micro grid making the property energy self sufficient. He and his wife Leslie also purchased the Cooperage property on 1st Street West, where they undertook the preservation and remodel of the aging historic building.
McQuown was born on July 17, 1934 and spent his childhood on a family farm in rural Illinois. He attended Northwestern University, the first in his family to get a college diploma. Afterwards, he served two years in the Navy as an engineer, later going to Harvard University where he got an MBA. From there he became an employee at the New York Investment bank, Smith Barney.
His interest in computers propelled him to investigate the movements of the stock market, and an executive at Wells Fargo Bank took an interest in McQuown’s work. He was then hired by Wells Fargo to develop a project in “Investment Decision Making.”
It was from this beginnings that a passive investment fund, what we now call Index funds, was developed. Eventually, McQuown left Wells Fargo and founded Dimensional Fund Advisors, a quantitative bond investing house that was ultimately acquired by Blackstone.
Mac McQuown is survived by his wife Leslie, his son Morgan and his daughter-in-law Alexa.
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