A Random Walk Down Wall Street
by Burton Malkiel
A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel is a great book for getting a handle on how markets operate, recommended by many finance professors as the place to start to understand finance. The ‘random walk’ theory itself isn’t foolproof, as the 2008 financial crisis has all too clearly demonstrated, but you still need to understand it before you can understand anything else about financial markets.
Perhaps the biggest service A Random Walk Down Wall Street performs is that it teaches you to develop a sceptical attitude to financial service professionals in general, and fund managers in particular.
Recommendations from our site
“It’s a wonderful read because it doesn’t presuppose any background knowledge of economics or finance…It’s had so much staying power. It was written in the 1970s, a bestseller when it came out, and it’s still a bestseller now. I recommend it to my MBA students today because it’s just a wonderful introduction to the field of finance. At the same time, it provides some very sensible advice for investors about how to manage their own money.” Read more...
Andrew W Lo, Economist
“Essentially, the theme of Malkiel’s book was that you could, in effect, do investing yourself.” Read more...
Best Investing Books for Beginners
John Kay, Economist
