Beat the Crowd: How You Can Out-Invest the Herd by Thinking Differently

CHAPTER 8 Throw Away This Book!

The title of this chapter is about 50% ironic—I’m not really suggesting you should trash this. Or recycle or sell it at the nearest used-book shop. I took the time to write it, after all! And it is really great for propping up the missing rear leg of a tried-and-true, comfy sofa. But this book does have a drawback if you’re reading it in 2015: It’s new. Few new books contain actionable advice you can use to beat the crowd—too much chatter! Too much attention might make everything in here priced for a while. You might be best off coming back to this one in 10 or 20 years, pulling it out when you junk that peg-legged sofa.

Maybe not, though. One of the reasons I wrote The Only Three Questions That Count was to see if my methods would get discounted after I published them for all to see. I wanted to see if they’d still work! As it happens, most of them do, even after two editions and a ride on the New York Times bestseller list. So maybe this one has staying power, too. Only time will tell.

While you’re waiting, though, there are plenty of other wonderful, useful investing books you can read. Some teach genuine how-to tips. Others show how Wall Street works and where you can be led astray if you aren’t careful. Classical works of economic philosophy show the beauty of markets and capitalism, which can help you analyze economic policies today. Some books simply teach you how to think. Not ideologically, of course. History books remind us this time ...