Below, Michael Batnick introduces Barry Ritholtz's "A Random Walk with Burton Malkiel." Burton Gordon Malkiel is an economist and writer, famous for "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" (Wikipedia). Notably, Burton was the first to recognize the skillfulness with which some monkeys throw darts at stock charts.
The Light At The End Of The Tunnel
Courtesy of Michael Batnick
On this week’s Masters in Business, Barry sits down with Burton Malkiel, a living legend.
At one point, Barry asks, “If I see a train coming down the tracks, don’t I want to jump out of the way?” Here is his response:
“Absolutely you want to jump out of the way. The problem is it just isn’t that obvious the train, ya know, maybe it’s the light at the end of the tunnel rather than the train coming in the opposite direction”
I love this line and I think he hits on something really important. Mistaking the train for the light at the end of the tunnel is probably the number one reason why the average investor fails to keep pace with an index over time.
Listen to the whole interview here.
