The Dartboard Theory

Wall Street relies on the myth that smart people with fancy algorithms can predict the future. Financial analyst Gary Stone destroys this myth in "The Dartboard Theory." The title references the famous experiment where a blindfolded monkey throwing darts at a newspaper's financial pages selected a portfolio that performed just as well as one selected by experts.



Stone explains the "Efficient Market Hypothesis" in plain English: all known information is already in the price. He shows data proving that 90% of active fund managers fail to beat the S&P 500 over the long term after fees are deducted.



The book is a love letter to the boring, low-cost Index Fund. Stone teaches the psychology of "doing nothing"—the hardest skill in investing. He exposes the industry of financial pundits who sell fear and greed, and provides a simple, "lazy" roadmap to wealth that beats the pros by simply buying the entire haystack instead of looking for the needle.