Fooled By Randomness by Nassim Taleb

The most controversial point he made was that successful traders or fund managers are attributed to a high degree of luck. He further explains why they can have consecutive fantastic records by using the analogy of coin flipping. As the coin only have 2 sides, one will have a fifty percent chance of guessing the correct side that lands up. If there are 100 traders/fund managers at the beginning of the game, after one round, we can assume there will be 50 people with the correct answer. In subsequent rounds, 25, 12, 6. Thus, these 6 traders/managers will have impressive track records! But he challenged that will they be successful thereafter? How true is it that they are just lucky? Judging from the fact that almost negligible number of fund managers that can beat the index benchmark for the long term (>5 years), he may be right.

He sees the world in a probabilistic nature where everything has a certain chance of happening. As a hedge fund manager himself, he often attacks methods used by other managers and mentioned that they fail to consider the randomness factor that is inherent to the market. This proved to be costly to them and he provided some real life examples. Due to his interest in philosophy, he often quotes philosophers and other great thinkers to augment his arguments.

Personally, I think it is a good book to read and will definitely allow you to look from another perspective regarding investment (inclined to the Random Walk Theory) and your life as well (everything by chance?).

Jon wrote a better review in this post.

Buy the book with free delivery