Investment

The Hawk Tuah girl, a young woman famous for a viral video in which she tawdrily describes a sex act, launched a meme coin this week — because of course she did. It instantly lost over 90 percent of its value. This, too, comes as no shock. But out of ignorance, stupidity and greed, many people put their real money into $Hawk and lost it all. And so, 2024 ends with assassinations in the middle of New York City, attempted coups in South Korea and @jiggadrin_ tweeting out that his $35,000 in “$Hawk is now $2,000 after ten minutes of buying,” and that “I am a huge fan of Hawk Tuah but you took my life savings.” In some replies, he tried to spin this as a joke post. But it appears he genuinely lost the money, as did many others.

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.