Fourth Edition 1985 by Burton G. Malkiel (1985-09-11)

Very informative and a book any and every investor should read (especially the younger investor). Simplifies the seemingly complex endeavor of picking stocks and makes investing accessible to even the most casual investor. I would recommend to every one I know. I will not summarize any of his points here... Go buy the book!

Having an MS in Finance, not much of the material in this book is new but it's a good read about the benefits of passive investing. I enjoyed reading the analysis and book has been updated nicely to cover the 2008 crash.

Even if you are die hard stock picker, you should read this book to understand what you are up against.

This is an excellent book. If you want to understand markets and how one might invest for retirement as an amateur, this is the best one on the market.
It adopts and expands on the John Bogle classic idea that the best and safest way for most of us to invest is through a diverse portfolio of index funds.

I was recommended this book after reading Total Money Makeover. I am glad I did it in that order because I do not believe I would have understood. I cannot wait until I can put these ideas into practice. I am 24 and I now feel as though I have the confidence to invest like a 30 year old. Thanks for the good read.

I've been a successful investor for over 37 years, and Professor Malkiel has done his research well. After reading this one book, and you will be on your way to becoming a successful investor. He covers all the BS and all the nutty claims made, and he manages to stay focused on the only important method of making money over the long term. Read this book and you will profit by it in the long run.

The book explodes the belief one can find the system that will make us all rich.
It doesn't exist.
The author gives good advice about not trying to figure out a system, just buy whole market index funds.

I recommend the book to people who are not going to spend 2-3 hours a day watching their stocks.

This book is very comprehensive and covers all aspects of investing . It provides ton of great information on how the world of finance operates and how a retail investor can benefit by taking a long term view . The main gist revolves around buying low cost index fund and take the lifecycle approach to investing based on age and risk appetite . It also has good humor sprinkled around to make the text overall engaging . Also it is a big book and may take some time to finish. Overall if you are interested in world of investing and finance this is the best book out there .

* as far as the saying goes, not the commodity

enjoyable read, priceless contents. Although not mentioned in the book, investing the money and time to read this book is the single best investment move you are gonna make.

This is an amazing read that has forever changed my attitude towards investing and investing strategy — I would highly recommend it for beginnings or people trying to understand how they should save their money for the future.

This book is terrific. I buy the newest addition whenever a new one is published. I am on my third edition. You really need to read the and understand the arguments he presents. It convinced me that no-one (except maybe Warren Buffet) can consistently beat the market.

A must in every personal investor's library. Malkiel, and this book, is uniquely respected on Wall Street and in academia.

He gives you specific and executable insight into what you should be doing as an investor and in your personal portfolios. He is also generous in loading you up with our great resources and references that will give you the edge, if there is one, on the random walk that is Wall Street.

Probably the most important book on finance you'll ever read if your talking in terms of investing. Buy an S&P 500 index fund. Boom. That's the basis of the book. The rest revolves around that and gives you a lot of amazing information. Mutual funds are not as safe as tou think they are!

One of the best investing books ever written! It covers all the essentials including: a brief history of the markets, stocks vs bonds, technical vs fundamental analysis, risk vs reward, modern portfolio theory and behavioral finance.

Probably the most important book on finance you'll ever read if your talking in terms of investing. Buy an S&P 500 index fund. Boom. That's the basis of the book. The rest revolves around that and gives you a lot of amazing information. Mutual funds are not as safe as tou think they are!

One of the best investing books ever written! It covers all the essentials including: a brief history of the markets, stocks vs bonds, technical vs fundamental analysis, risk vs reward, modern portfolio theory and behavioral finance.

If you only read six books about the market, this should be one of them. As well as being fun to read, "Random Walk" has finally, after 30 years of revisions and improvements, become a useful investment guide.
There is more than one appoach to success in the market. Some of them actually work, but they require more time and effort than most people have to spend. If, like most of us, you want to concentrate on your career and family and investment is a sideline then this book is for you. If I were to paraphrase the thrust of this book it would be, "First of all, do no harm."
Even if you follow a different approach, you would ignore the data in this book at your peril.

This is a superb introduction to how the stock market functions. Very readable. When you finish you will know more than most persons and will be able to deal with stocks confidently. Malkiel is one of the proponents of the "efficient market" theory...with appropriate warnings.

Malkiel is of the opinion that actively managed funds will never beat passive index funds. I too had this view before I read A Random Walk, however, after reading it, and seeing all the evidence that Malkiel provides, I am even more convinced. I did start to get a bit bored towards the end of the book. However, overall, it was a great read.

There are a lot of personal finance books that claim to have proven methodologies for successful investing. In this book, Malkiel espouses a "buy-and-hold" strategy of investing in a diversified portfolio of index funds that mirror the performance of the market as a whole. With a very structured approach, Malkiel makes a very good case for his passive investment scheme and pokes holes in the more active investment strategies such as technical analysis and fundamental analysis.

Malkiel believes that the market is efficient. By this he means that future prices are not related to historical prices and any market anomalies will be corrected in reasonable time. His best arguments for this theory are made when he deconstructs and disproves the most common critiques of the efficient market theory. His excellent treatment of market bubbles, which are often cited as arguments against efficient markets, remind us that these anomalies were all efficiently corrected in due course. Modern Portfolio Theory (which is also covered in this book) states that in efficient markets, the only way to increase returns is to increase the non-diversifiable risk of your portfolio. There is no way to consistently produce risk-adjusted returns greater than the market average. Although critics have pointed out certain investors (ie Warren Buffett) have in fact done this, this also is not inconsistent with the efficient market theory as random chance would predict a few success stories out of the many that play the game. Malkiel reminds us that Survirorship bias leads us to remember success stories without even hearing about most failures.

As long as markets are efficient, the "best game in town" is to buy and hold index funds. Three big reasons are transaction costs, management fees, and taxes, all of which are significantly lower than in actively traded strategies. Malkiel admits that this is not very exciting and offers tips for those with "gambling temperament" to invest in individual stocks, but insists that all investors maintaining a strong core of a highly diversified portfolio of index funds.

Absolutely brilliant book. You can read the punch line in the first 30 pages but the details and explanations are well worth the read. Completely changed my opinion of investing. I thought I could never do it as well as the pros and would have paid a lot of money to a personal investor to end up with a worse return. Don't believe that statement is true? Read the book.