Take the pulse of New York’s wealthy

Wedding Crunchers, a new website from Rap Genius, allows users to see “what the world’s most self-important people think is important” by tracking recurring terms and phrases in the New York Times’ weddings and engagements section.

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“When you search for a phrase…you get back a graph displaying how usage of that phrase fluctuated over time,” notes the site. Firm names, professions, alma maters, ages, ethnic backgrounds, as well as terms like “hedge fund” can all be tracked to gauge their past and current prominence.

For instance, the data shows a small uptick in the frequency of “Muslim,” “Buddhist”, and “Sikh,” but an “explosive” increase in “Hindu.” This matches demographic trends: “the city’s Indian population increased by 118% from 1990 to 2000, while the city’s overall population grew by 9%,” the Rap Genius report notes.

It also points out “the usage of ‘hedge fund’ in wedding announcements peaked in 2007, the same year that many high-profile funds suffered unprecedented losses as the financial crisis swung into high gear.”

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Staff

The staff of Advisor.ca have been covering news for financial advisors since 1998.