6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Take a walk on the wild side - it is more fun :-), 16 Jan 2003
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.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Going for the long run, 8 Nov 2006
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.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE book about efficient markets, 29 July 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: A Random Walk Down Wall Street (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.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No