Burton Malkiel

The safest bets in Wall Street will be our downfall

It’s not often that anyone — much less an academic — writes a book that launches a revolution, but that’s exactly what Burton Malkiel did in 1973 when the Princeton economist published a short, potent book called A Random Walk Down Wall Street. As of 2023, the book is in its thirteenth edition. Malkiel famously insisted that “a blindfolded monkey throwing darts at the stock listings could select a portfolio that would do just as well as one selected by the experts,” and then he spent his entire career doing his best to prove that hypothesis.

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