ABSTRACT
Burton G. Malkiel, the author of A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing was born in Boston in 1932 and is a well-known American economist, investor, businessman, and writer. He started out as an analyst on Wall Street before quickly moving into academia, earning a PhD in economics at Princeton University before taking a post in the institution's economics department. During his academic career, Malkiel was also active in the business world. A Random Walk is a book about the stock market—principally the US stock market—which argues that stock prices move in completely random ways. Malkiel's argument has shown remarkable staying power since it first appeared in 1973. For the public, A Random Walk provided an intellectual challenge to the value of professional money managers. Not only is it impossible for these managers to consistently beat the market, they also charge customers high fees and high transaction costs each time they buy or sell shares.
