A Mathematician Plays The Stock Market - Softcover

Paulos, John Allen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0465054811 ISBN 13: 9780465054817

Publisher: Basic Books, 2004

Synopsis

In A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market best-selling author John Allen Paulos demonstrates what the tools of mathematics can tell us about the vagaries of the stock market. Employing his trademark stories, vignettes, paradoxes, and puzzles (and even a film treatment), Paulos addresses every thinking reader's curiosity about the market: Is it efficient? Is it rational? Is there anything to technical analysis, fundamental analysis, and other supposedly time-tested methods of picking stocks? How can one quantify risk? What are the most common scams? What light do fractals, network theory, and common psychological foibles shed on investor behavior? Are there any approaches to investing that truly outperform the major indexes? Can a deeper knowledge of mathematics help beat the odds?All of these questions are explored with the engaging erudition that made Paulos's A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper and Innumeracy favorites with both armchair mathematicians and readers who want to think like them. Paulos also shares the cautionary tale of his own long and disastrous love affair with WorldCom. In the tradition of Burton Malkiel's A Random Walk Down Wall Street and Jeremy Siegel's Stocks for the Long Run, this wry and illuminating book is for anyone, investor or not, who follows the markets-or knows someone who does.

About this title

About the Author:

John Allen Paulos received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin and is professor of mathematics at Temple University. Dr. Paulos has written a number of scholarly papers on mathematical logic, probability, and the philosophy of science. He is also the author of Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences, Beyond Numeracy: Ruminations of a Numbers Man, Mathematics and Humor, and A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and two children.

From Publishers Weekly:

We like to think not only that mathematicians are smarter than the rest of us but that by dint of their mastery of numbers, they hold the key to understanding the baffling mysteries of the universe. Alas, Paulos (Innumeracy) says that's not always the case. As the author relates in this funny, insightful little volume about attempts to bring order and science to the free-for-all that is the stock market, he himself was once a big investor (in WorldCom). Despite strong evidence to sell, he desperately hung on to his stock as the price plummeted, proving that a head for numbers doesn't always translate to Wall Street know-how. Through most of this book, Paulos discusses various methods for predicting markets and offers thoughts on why people keep trying to perfect them. Shocking in their obtuseness are the so-called Elliot Wave followers, who believe stocks operate according to an impossibly arcane series of numerical waves and cycles. The efficient-market theorists-many of whom believe the stock market is so inherently efficient that everything one needs to know about a company is reflected in its stock price-get the most thorough joshing from Paulos: never able to resist a joke, he tells one about how many efficient market theorists it takes to change a light bulb. "Answer: None. If the light bulb needed changing the market would have already done it." Playful and informative, Paulos's book will be appreciated by investors with a sense of humor.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0465054811
• ISBN 13: 9780465054817
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224