By winter of 1994, Fidelity Investments offered 2 of the most consistently high yielding investment options available, the “Spartan” mutual fund and the “Magellan” mutual fund. After years of repeated high performance, Fidelity finally reported not only a loss, but a dip into the negative, much to the chagrin of investors. As it turned out, the loss was actually a misinterpretation of the data and though the yield was not as high as investors had been accustomed to in years past, it did not show such a negative yield.

While at Fidelity Investments in Las Colinas, Irving, Texas that winter, I took part in the design of the Automated Plan Reconciliation System project as a Senior Consultant for Coopers & Lybrand.

As the Fidelity offices moved to another office building in Las Colinas that winter, it seemed that more time was spent moving, re-organizing our work areas and ironing out technical work-station issues than on the actual design effort. By the following spring, I was requesting Coopers & Lybrand to re-assign me to a different client.