What does the financial term, "Staying ahead of the Curve" mean?

Answer 1

I think this is just a figure of speech, which doesn't only apply to financial stuff.

It originates in statistics. Most data of characteristics of populations are of normal distributions, which can be arranged on a graph, and since most people are around the mean (the middle), the shape takes on a bell curve. If you're "ahead" of the curve, you're on the higher end of things. So the phrase means being one step ahead of most other people.

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/NormalDistribution.html