The Paragon Team:  Trudy, Shannon, David, Nathan, and Elizabeth

Paragon Wealth Management celebrated 23 years of business this month.

The beginning of Paragon

David Young started his career as an entrepreneur. He opened over a dozen successful businesses in the early 1980’s. In 1985, he sold his businesses and wanted to invest the proceeds, but was unable to find an investment firm to meet his needs.

David began conducting extensive research to find the best ways to invest. After a year of research and trial and error, he opened Paragon Wealth Management for business. At first he managed his money and his friends’ and family’s. When he avoided the 1987 crash, his methods sparked a lot of interest from investors, and his company began to grow.

In the early years of David’s business, while managing his own money, he built and tested basic quantitative models that determined when to be in or out of the equity markets. The models measured, monitored, adjusted and changed the investments as market conditions changed.

David said the largest obstacle he faces in the investment industry is a bear bear market. He displays a 9 1/2 foot grizzly bear in his office that he hunted in Alaska to show he “killed” the bear. As an avid hunter and outdoorsman, David stared risk and uncertainty in the face many times while harvesting some world record book animals. At Paragon, in a similar way, he has survived three major bear markets and many mini bears over the past 23 years.

Today, David continues to research to find ways to improve Paragon’s portfolios. Paragon is known for its flagship portfolio called Top Flight. It has generated a total return of 323.01% versus 30.82% for the S&P 500 from its inception on January 1, 1998 through October 31, 2009. Its compound annual return is 13. 16% versus 2.33% for the S&P 500. (Visit www.paragonwealth.com to see complete track record and full disclosures.)