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A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Best Investment Advice for the New Century

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If you're looking for a get-rich-quick book,
don't bother. While this book will help you
become a smarter investor, the goal isn't so
much to convince you that certain methods of
picking securities are superior to others as it is to
provide a solid education in financial market
theory.

It's a long book, and written with an academic
style that some people will find dry and boring,
but Malkiel successfully avoids turning it into
a textbook. He manages to present a wealth of
information about *why* markets behave the way
they do without getting bogged down in the math.

If you've read some of the other books on
investing, and are interested enough to want
to look deeper behind the scenes, this book
is well worth your time.

Forget this version. Instead, go to the library and check out the 1996 version, which at least discusses 'pork bellies' (derrivatives and option trading), if too little. Instead of taking the cue from the collapse (10/98) of Long Term Capital Management and producing something new and more interesting, Malkiel keeps on giving us warmed over versions of the same old EMH (efficient market hypothesis), which many researchers by now know is wrong (Fisher Black & Co. knew it in the eighties). Malkiel's beloved 'back of the envelope' calculation showing large how stock price changes can be caused by small interest rate changes is also irrelevant, because it assumes that dividends determine stock prices, and everyone in the market knows that dividends haven't mattered in the last ten years, at least. The 1996 edition (3 stars) is informative. There, you can learn what beta is, and the example discussed of using covered calls as a conservative strategy is also nice.

I learned a great deal from this book about investing. For all the technical financial subjects that are addressed in this book, Mr Malkiel manages to make them interesting through clear and often humourous explanations. He makes a strong case for an investment strategy of "buy-and-hold" as well as for Index Funds. Whether or not you agree with that strategy, there is still quite a bit of value in this book. Mr Malkiel thoroughly presents the two prevailing investment theories. First, he explains Value Investing whose proponents include S. Eiot Guild, John B Williams, Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffet. Then, he explains a form of investing which relies on Mass Psychology which has been enunciated by Lord John M Keynes. Finally, Mr Malkiel articulates a simple investing strategy which accomodates both of these views. I feel much more confident that I am able to make proper investment decisions after reading this book. If you are interested in financial investments, and particularly, the Stock Market, this is an interesting book for you.

Beware of the one star reviews, its clear that these people are technical analysts. They don't sell advice, they sell commissions. Technicalist try to make money by a encouraging high turnover e.g. stirring excitement, lending easy credit etc. etc. You just have to read this book to understand. My views? well the maket is not totally random its more "deterministic" meaning not completely random. This personal idiosycracy I acquired from chaos theory literature. On investing- you really have no choice, if you think about it, you have to put your money where you can earn the highest rate of return possible and a savings account is surely not going beat the return on stocks and bonds or a portfolio of both. Plus whatever happens to corporate earnings (if they go down) you still have compound interest working for you if you save long enough. And that will beat the return on a savings account.

the first part gave excellent proof to random walk theory,but the second part just is as another investment myth....

This book presents one major theorem and several
hundred pages of proofs. Save your money and invest
in Vanguard Index funds...no load, low fees, and
better performance over time than stock pickin'.
There...that's it.

Concise, thorough, and fair: Malakiel lays out efficient markets theory (the economics of information), and debunks anyone who claims to have a "special edge" on the markets.

Sure, real world markets have frictions. The important question is not "Does the real world differ from the world of the model?" but "Does it differ enough to make a difference?" Malakiel argues that it doesn't differ enough to make a difference.

Some of Malakiel's examples are a bit antiquated, and anyone with a strong math/finance background will feel as if they're sitting in the dunce class during some of Malakiel's explanations. And the very last part of the book, where he gives investment recommendations, seems to contradict the main part of his theory: he claims that some investments (basically, contrarianism) can consistently beat the market! Huh?

Overall, however, this is an extremely valuable, and even enjoyable book.

very interesting and inspiring book to learn about business and investment and how this stochastic world works . . .

Das Buch sollte jeder Investor lesen, es ist umfassend und klar, wertvoll in jeder Hinsicht. Die Überlegungen und Empfehlungen sind mit gewissen Abstrichen auch in/für Europa mit ETFs umsetzbar, weniger mit Investmentfonds, da diese in Europa viel zu teuer sind (Transaktionskosten, Managementkosten, Depotkosten).

In RANDOM WALK DOWN WALL STREET, Burton Malkiel sets out the basics of modern corporate financial theory in a way accessible to the law reader. As a teacher of corporate finance to law students, I have recommended this book to my students for over 10 years. Numerous alumni have told me that was the best advise they got in law school (a sad commentary on American legal education, but that's another story).

Two basic theories are expounded here. First, modern portfolio theory (MPT), which elucidates the relationship between risk and diversification. Because investors are risk averse, they must be paid for bearing risk, which is done through a higher expected rate of return. As such, we speak of a risk premium: the difference in the rate of return paid on a risky investment and the rate of return on a risk-free investment. In the real world, we measure the risk premium associated with a particular investment by subtracting the short-term Treasury bill interest rate from the risky investment's rate of return. The risk premium, however, will only reflect certain risks. MPT differentiates between two types of risk: unsystematic and systematic. Unsystematic risk might be regarded as firm-specific risk: The risk that the CEO will have a heart attack; the risk that the firm's workers will go out on strike; the risk that the plant will burn down. These are all firm-specific risks. Systematic risk might be regarded as market risk: risks that affect all firms to one degree or another: changes in market interest rates; election results; recessions; and so forth. MPT acknowledges that risk and return are related: investors will demand a higher rate of return from riskier investments. In other words, a corporation issuing junk bonds must pay a higher rate of return than a company issuing investment grade bonds. Yet, portfolio theory claims that issuers of securities need not compensate investors for unsystematic risk. In other words, investors will not demand a risk premium to reflect firm-specific risks. Why? There is a mathematical proof, which relates to variance and standard deviation, but Malkiel explains it in a way that is quite intuitive. Investors can eliminate unsystematic risk by diversifying their portfolio. Diversification eliminates unsystematic risk, because things tend to come out in the wash. One firm's plant burns down, but another hit oil. Thus, even though the actual rate of return earned on a particular investment is likely to diverge from the expected return, the actual return on a well-diversified portfolio is less likely to diverge from the expected return. Bottom line? If you hold a nondiversified portfolio (say all Internet stocks), you are bearing risks for which the market will not compensate you. You may do well for a while, but it will eventually catch up to you (as it has recently for tech stocks).

The second pillar of Malkiel's analysis is the efficient capital markets theory (ECMH). The fundamental thesis of the ECMH is that, in an efficient market, current prices always and fully reflect all relevant information about the commodities being traded. In other words, in an efficient market, commodities are never overpriced or underpriced: the current price will be an accurate reflection of the market's consensus as to the commodity's value. Of course, there is no real world condition like this, but the securities markets are widely believed to be close to this ideal. There are three forms of ECMH, each of which has relevance for investors: **Weak form: All information concerning historical prices is fully reflected in the current price. Price changes in securities are serially independent or random. What do I mean by "random"? Suppose the company makes a major oil find. Do I mean that we can't predict whether the stock will go up or down? No: obviously stock prices generally go up on good news and down on bad news. What randomness means is that investors can not profit by using past prices to predict future prices. If the Weak Form of the hypothesis is true, technical analysis (a/k/a charting)-the attempt to predict future prices by looking at the past history of stock prices-can not be a profitable trading strategy over time. And, indeed, empirical studies have demonstrated that securities prices do move randomly and, moreover, have shown that charting is not a long-term profitable trading strategy. ** Semi-Strong Form: Current prices incorporate not only all historical information but also all current public information. As such, investors can not expect to profit from studying available information because the market will have already incorporated the information accurately into the price. As Malkiel demonstrates, this version of the ECMH also has been well established by empirical studies. Implication: if you spend time and effort studying stocks and companies, you are wasting your time. If you pay somebody to do it for you, you are wasting your money. ** Strong Form holds that prices incorporate all information, publicly available or not. This version must be (and is) false, or insider trading would be profitable.

In the last section of RANDOM WALK, Malkiel distills all this theory into an eminently practical life-cycle guide to investing. As one may infer, it has two basic principles. First, diversification. Second, no one systematically earns positive abnormal returns from trading in securities; in other words, over time nobody outperforms the market. Mutual funds may outperform the market in 1 year, but they may falter in another. Once adjustment is made for risks, every reputable empirical study finds that mutual funds generally don't outperform the market over time. Malkiel's recommendation: put your money into no-load passively managed index mutual funds. You will see lots of anonymous reviews of RANDOM WALK claiming Malkiel is wrong. Odds are, most of those folks are have either been misled by the long bull market or, even more likely, are brokers or other market professionals who make a living selling active portfolio management. In sum, buy it, read it, believe it, and practice it.