A Random Walk down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing

Burton Malkiel's A Random Walk down Wall Street is essential reading for individual investors. The lesson is simple — unless you are a professional, you should not attempt to pick winners in the stock market and should instead invest in low-cost index funds. Of course there are exceptions to this rule (Warren Buffett, for one) and even Malkiel has shown his own revealed preferences for firms that believe they can beat the market. But these exceptions are rare enough and inaccessible enough that most everyone else shouldn’t try.