page_title: Joseph de la Vega
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Joseph de la Vega / Biography
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: Beschrijving Templum Judaeorum / Joodenkerk De Portugees-Israëlitische Synagoge. Links Rapenburgerstraat 193-187, rechts Deventer Houtmarkt. Techniek: ets, handgekleurd. Documenttype prent Vervaardiger Schenk, Pieter (1660-1713) Collectie Collectie Atlas Dreesmann Datering 1710 ca. Geografische naam Rapenburgerstraat Mr. Visserplein Inventarissen http://archief.amsterdam/archief/10094 Afbeeldingsbestand 010094005216
context_page_description: José or Joseph Penso de la Vega, best known as Josseph de la Vega, was a Spanish or Sephardi Jewish merchant in diamonds, financial expert, moral philosopher and poet, residing in 17th century Amsterdam. He became famous for his masterpiece Confusion of Confusions. Vega's work is the first study written about the Amsterdam Stock Exchange and its participants, the shareholders. In it he describes the whole gamut, running from options, futures contracts, margin buying, to bull and bear conspiracies, even some form of stock-index trading. The publication of Confusion de Confusiones helped lay the foundations for modern fields of technical analysis and behavioral finance.
context_section_description: Joseph Penso was born about 1650 into a family of Spanish and Portuguese Jews. He was the son of Isaac Penso Félix (-1683) and of Esther de la Vega (-1679) who was a relative of the Vegas that founded a Talmudic school in Livorno. His father was a Marrano from Espejo, a small town in Córdoba province (Andalusia, Spain), who had made a solemn vow in the dungeon of the Inquisition that within a year after regaining his liberty he would openly profess Judaism. This oath he seems to have fulfilled in Middelburg after his escape to Antwerp. He moved to Hamburg, where he married Esther de la Vega. Sara, their first child, was born there in 1645. In an unknown year the family settled in Amsterdam.   According to the marriage certificates in the Amsterdam City Archives, Joseph had three younger brothers: Abraham (ca 1656-1710) was a schoolmaster and a diamond seller; David (1654-) and Raphael (ca 1659-) were merchants, who married on the same day in December 1687 two sisters Alvares Vega from Antwerp. Between 1700 and 1710 they acted as agents in London for Dutch investors. The former moved to Dublin, see Ballybough Cemetery.
  Joseph was taught by Isaac Aboab da Fonseca and Moses Raphael de Aguilar, members of the Talmud Torah community. When in his eighteenth year he completed his first Hebrew drama, "Asire ha-Tiḳwah" ("Pardes Shoshannim"), in three acts, which appeared in Amsterdam in 1673 (2d ed., Leghorn, 1770), and in which he allegorically depicted the victory of the will over the passions. He married Rachel Alvaro (Alvares?) His active commercial life began in Amsterdam in 1679, perhaps in 1683. He became a respected merchant and an elegant Spanish poet, and filled the honorary offices of president of the Academia de los Sitibundos and in 1685 as secretary of the Academia de los Floridos, founded by Manuel de Belmonte. Joseph de la Vega, who used his mother last name, wrote over 200 letters to different princes and statesmen, and was a prolific author, "the marvel of the academies, who made his work proof against criticism by presenting his subject in ordered form; delicate in his sentiments and of true refinement", as De Barrios ("Arbol de las Vidas", p. 90) characterizes him.  Joseph de la Vega lived in the collapse of the Dutch East India Company, which financially ruined him. Also Coenraad van Beuningen lost half a million guilder in 1688 through speculation in VOC shares. He wrote letters to the ecclesiastical authorities about the end of time and painted Hebrew or Kabbalistic signs on his house. The funding of the armed invasion of William III in England caused a financial crisis in the Dutch Republic. Consequently, the financiers following William III to Britain possessed a full range of financial techniques, and for which they found a ready market indeed. This transfer of know-how formed the basis of derivatives trading in London, firmly linking Amsterdam's pioneering work to the emergence of modern markets.
caption: Portuguese Synagogue (Amsterdam) from the NW by Peter Schenk the Elder
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