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But the genie was out of the bottle. Derivatives have changed the rules of the game forever. Average investors who are now pouring money into mutual funds and stocks will soon have access to hundreds of other investment options. Think of the world as a landscape of opportunity--everything from distressed Japanese real estate to Russian oil futures--marketed and packaged by giant banks like BankAmerica or by fund companies like Fidelity Investments and the Vanguard Group. "This is like the automobile's coming," says Sanford. "We'd always had transportation--people walked, eventually they rode donkeys--but the automobile was a break from everything that came before it. Risk management will do that to finance. It's a total break."
In Sanford's vision of particle finance, every financial asset, from the mortgage you hold on your house to the items you've charged on your credit card, will become part of a giant, interconnected financial universe. And each piece of your superportfolio, called a wealth account, will be understood not simply as a "stock" or a "bond" but as an instrument designed to match your financial needs with the available options. In the same way a FORTUNE 500 treasurer may use derivatives to balance his or her need for pesos and yen, wealth accounts will precisely balance your demand for investment and consumption. Says Christos Cotsakos, CEO of online brokerage group E*Trade: "The wired household is the ultimate bank." Your checking deposits, for instance, might be programmed to scour an electronic Web looking for interest-bearing investments overnight while you sleep. If a Turkish real estate developer needs to use the money for a few hours while you doze (and is willing to pay you for the privilege), your wealth account will be smart enough to decide if that's a risk you'd be willing to take in exchange for the reward and then, if it is, to lock in the deal.
These smoothly integrated accounts will make old "classical" transactions--like getting a loan or buying stocks--as charming and irrelevant as classical notions that the sun orbits the earth. Because the system will constantly monitor your net worth, you'll be able to draw instantly on assets in one area to create liabilities in another. These computer-run accounts will factor in everything from the weather to the age of your children in plotting out your future demands. "Yesterday's income and today's wealth will always be known with a high degree of confidence," Sanford predicted in his 1993 speech. "Wealth accounts will be instantly tapped via 'wealth cards.' For example, you will be able to pay for your sports car by instantly drawing on part of the wealth inherent in your vacation house." Finance, suddenly packed with microchips, could become a banker-free zone. Hence the drive of McColl, who is responding to an immutable merger of the laws of finance and the laws of modern business: reinvent yourself or die.