A Random Walk Down Wall Street *****

Burton Malkiel looks at the long history of investing, beginning in the 1600's with the tulip bulb craze in the Netherlands, and finishing with some of the more recent investment mania's like the technology bubble at the turn of this century. Exposed is how the financial industry at large, complicit with the media, take advantage our basic emotions like fear and greed, creating huge profits for themselves at our expense.

After taking apart and disproving the common investment strategy's used by professional money managers, Burton Malkiel provides a simple investment strategy, based on 50 years of academic research, that is time tested and prudent for both the average Joe and even the most "sophisticated" of professionals . To summarize the book- It is extremely hard to beat the market  (most professional's fail), but very easy to achieve market rates of return, which historically have been very generous.