- Hardcover: 462 pages
- Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co.; 7th Revised edition edition (12 May 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0393047814
- ISBN-13: 978-0393047813
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16 x 3.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,261,437 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
A Random Walk Down Wall Street
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Product Description
Review
Not more than half a dozen really good books about investing have been written in the past fifty years. This one may well belong in the classics category.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Business Week
You'll learn a lot but you won't feel you're working.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
In this book I will take you on a random walk down Wall Street, providing a guided tour of the complex world of finance and practical advice on investment opportunities and strategies. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
In this book I will take you on a random walk down Wall Street, providing a guided tour of the complex world of finance and practical advice on investment opportunities and strategies. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Let's talk about the Random Walk. The stockmarket is a game of chance - you might as well flip a coin to determine which way prices are going. In fact tossing is preferable because researching shares or paying professionals takes time and costs money.
The Random Walk attacks the tenets of professional fund management: that investors can pick shares trading at a lower price than their true value or traders can spot trends in price movements and exploit them.
Malkiel marshals an army of statisticians, back-testing the more common investment strategies and finding them wanting. Sure you may win in the short-term, but that is lady luck. In the long-run, once you take costs into account, all bets are off.
I do not buy it. Back-testing is fine and dandy but does it actually prove anything? Real investors - and I am talking about private investors here - change their strategies, exercise judgement and break the rules. They are not slaves to the slide-rule.
While it is common knowledge that professional money managers are doomed to fail, I suspect private investors have a better chance of beating the market. The problem is private investors are by nature shy animals.
Just because I disagree with his thesis does not mean I do not think you should bother with the book. Malkiel is articulate and his tour through fundamental analysis, technical analysis, modern portfolio theory and the capital asset pricing model is as good as any introduction I have read.
I just cannot bring myself to believe anomalies do not exist when I see them all around me. You know - internet bubbles, overreactions, Warren Buffet. Even Malkiel sees anomalies. But in his world they are rare, difficult to profit from and vanish once common knowledge.
He even has an investment trust habit. C'mon Mr Malkiel admit it - inside every index-hugger is a stock picker desperate to get out. It is more fun!
___
A word of warning for British readers. The first three chapters are theory, it is a universal language. The fourth is a practical guide, less practical for us because it is written in American: all IRA's and Keogh plans. Still you can translate some of it and derive general principles from the rest.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A good investment for those interested in playing the "Wall Street" game.
The first three parts of the book were really exciting, but in the last one Malkiel goes practical, and that's when he lost me for some moments, since most of it focus on US tax reallity.
The basic message goes something like this:
- You can sometimes beat the market, either by performing time series analysis on stock prices and finding some kind of a pattern, either by studying the companies's numbers and finding an undervalued stock, or by foreseing a crowd movement and getting there before everyone else. But most of the time the market will beat you, because there are random events that are impossible to predict, books can be cooked, future growth for several years in a row is pratically impossible to forecast, and sometimes you are just another sucker in the crowd. So Malkiel states that you'll be better of going for the long run, getting a do-it-yourself diverse portfolio or putting your money in a broad index fund, saving this way lots of taxes, comissions and sleepless nights, and gaining above average returns.
The first three parts of the book were really exciting, but in the last one Malkiel goes practical, and that's when he lost me for some moments, since most of it focus on US tax reallity.
The basic message goes something like this:
- You can sometimes beat the market, either by performing time series analysis on stock prices and finding some kind of a pattern, either by studying the companies's numbers and finding an undervalued stock, or by foreseing a crowd movement and getting there before everyone else. But most of the time the market will beat you, because there are random events that are impossible to predict, books can be cooked, future growth for several years in a row is pratically impossible to forecast, and sometimes you are just another sucker in the crowd. So Malkiel states that you'll be better of going for the long run, getting a do-it-yourself diverse portfolio or putting your money in a broad index fund, saving this way lots of taxes, comissions and sleepless nights, and gaining above average returns.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If the thought of reading an economics book scares you, this is the book for you. Burton Malkiel's work is one of the most famous investment books of the century, but it is simply a joy to read. The text does an excellent job of introducing the reader the gem of modern economic theory, the Efficient Market Hypothesis. I would like to note, however, that this hypothesis has rightfully undergone a great deal of scrutiny in recent years. Before you subscribe to Malkiel's ideas and hire a chimp to throw darts at the Wall Street Journal, you should take the time to look at the arguments against the EMH. Specifically, I would suggest a few works by Richard Thaller: 1) The Winner's Curse: Paradoxes and Anomalies in Economic Life and 2) Advances in Behavioral Finance. The latter is a bit dry, but it would be very enjoyable for the hard-core economist out there.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Simple idea overextended
The main idea in the book is that a nonsophisticated, average guy could achieve good returns by simply investing in index funds, whereas sophisticated investors not neccesserely... Read more
Published on 14 Dec 2008 by K. Birznieks
Simple, straightforward investment advice
I really cannot rate this book enough. If you have a little bit of money lef over each year, then this book will give you some very wise advice as to what to do with that... Read more
Published on 14 Jun 2007 by Mr. J. J. Niland
Intellegent, timeless investment advice for all ages
A Random Walk Down Wall Street is a superb and timeless guide to investing that clearly explains the myriad of options open to investors. Read more
Published on 29 Dec 2006 by K. Curtis
extremely poor. read Benjamin Graham instead
This book is defeatism defined from page 1. The author believes in efficent markets simply because it is the easy option even though we can point to discrepancies daily . Read more
Published on 17 May 2005 by "dropthehand"
Packed With Knowledge!
The first edition of Bernard Malkiel's A Random Walk Down Wall Street appeared in 1973, a few years after the twentieth century's first big computer technology bubble, the go-go... Read more
Published on 7 Jun 2004 by Rolf Dobelli
At last a sensible investment guide
Malkiel provides a measured overrview of investment markets, and explains convincingly how the average investor can make long-term gains, avoid paying out high trading charges and... Read more
Published on 9 Jan 2004 by Neil Lewis
Packed with Knowledge!
The first edition of Bernard Malkiel's A Random Walk Down Wall Street appeared in 1973, a few years after the twentieth century's first big computer technology bubble, the go-go... Read more
Published on 16 Oct 2003 by Rolf Dobelli
NAILS THE MYTHS
An excellant book that helps you deal with the self serving rubbish most investment professionals come out with. I think some reviewers have misunderstood him. Read more
Published on 24 Feb 2000
Financial economics made simple
This book is very well written and easy to read. It covers financial economics for the private investor but is completely non-mathematical. Read more
Published on 10 Oct 1999
Great book for the personal investor
I got this book as a gift and I am very glad that I read it. First to say that it is a pleasure to read this book, it is very very well written, something not commonly found in... Read more
Published on 6 Sep 1999
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