Nobody Knows Anything

“Nobody knows anything ... Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.”

―William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade

As the ongoing worldwide revolution demonstrated by Brexit, the Trump election, the Italian and French elections show, there are no experts; no gurus; only fools pretending to be gurus and experts. These fake experts lead both novice and experienced investors down a primrose path leading to constant losses and despair.

In Nobody Knows Anything Moriarty begins by giving the reader excerpts from the 170 year old classic book on human behavior titled Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay. It's vital that new investors understand that crowd behavior is more important than investment fundamentals or technical analysis. If an investor knows what the mob is doing and understands the mob is always wrong, he or she can profit by doing the opposite.

Other chapters discuss when an investor should sell an investment, why it's vital to understand the bias and agenda of a source and how the concept of deviation and regression to the mean can provide helpful investments tips. In short this book may not make an investor rich but it might prevent him from becoming poor.