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- Newsgroups: misc.invest
- Path: sparky!uunet!utcsri!torn!nott!bnrgate!bmers145!bnr.ca!jasonc
- From: jasonc@bnr.ca (Jason Chen)
- Subject: Re: A RANDOM WALK DOWN WALL STREET...good book!
- Message-ID: <1992Nov16.152434.18996@bmers145.bnr.ca>
- Sender: news@bmers145.bnr.ca
- Reply-To: jasonc@bnr.ca (Jason Chen)
- Organization: Bell-Northern Research Ltd.
- References: <BxLDr6.6oD@news.cso.uiuc.edu> <1992Nov12.183724.17709@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
- Date: Mon, 16 Nov 92 15:24:34 GMT
- Lines: 40
-
- In article <1992Nov12.183724.17709@m.cs.uiuc.edu>, watanabe@milton.cs.uiuc.edu (Larry Watanabe) writes:
- |> schneid@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Mike Schneider) writes:
- |>
- |> >The book "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" was very interesting
- |> >reading, especially for anyone who thinks the can analyze
- |> >some data and come up with a good *speculation* strategy.
- |>
- |> >Burton Malkiel explains that speculating is trying to make
- |> >quick money, while investing is making money over the long haul.
- |> >Further, he says that one can create a good investment strategy
- |> >but not a good speculation strategy. It appears that the good
- |> >way to make money is to spread out your risk.
- |>
- |> >The book is basically about why technical and fundamental analysis
- |> >won't work, with many examples of exactly when and how it wouldn't work.
- |> >Pretty good reading.
- |>
- |> Malkiel's case against the fundamental analysis not working is
- |> based on the "efficient market" theory. However, people often
- |> overreact to bad news, which is why often strategies
- |> like low P/E can outperform random choices.
- |>
- |> Also, Malkiel is very careful to note that a
- |> random strategy will perform as well as the AVERAGE money manager.
- |> He does note that there are some exceptions to this rule.
-
- Just one note: Malkiel assumes that all people have the bad news
- and they have the bad news at the same time. So that all the people can react at about
- the same time. In reality, the bad news propagates rathen slowly to many investors,
- especially are those small investors. The worst is that many investors don't even
- get the bad news until it's too late. As the result of propagation deplay, random
- walk may not perform as well as it claims. I believe there are still needs for the
- technical and fundamental analysis.
-
-
- --
- Jason X.G. Chen | "A distributed system is one in which the
- Ph: (613) 765-4844 | failure of a computer you didn't even know
- Fax: (613) 763-2202 | existed can render your own computer unusable"
- Email: jasonc@bnr.ca | Leslie Lamport
-