Do you want to know how to make money in the stock market? In particular, do you want to know what will give you an edge over everyone else? I think you do. And I’m not the first finance writer to think so.
I’m reading the wonderful "Invested: How Three Centuries of Stock Market Advice Reshaped Our Money, Markets, and Mind,” a magnificent effort from five dedicated academics covering a full 300 years of printed investment advice. That adds up to an awful lot of books. But skim the contents of a few and you will find that under different titles and guises, they mostly give the same rather good advice — advice we are as well to follow today as we were in the 18th century.
The genre was kicked off by Thomas Mortimer in 1761, with his "pioneering” guide to the market, "Every Man His Own Broker,” which played on the popular idea that experts were rather overrated. ("Every Man His Own Broker” followed popular publications such as "Every Man His Own Doctor” and "Every Man His Own Lawyer.”) He found a very ready audience: The book was a hit "racing through five editions in little more than 12 months,” according to "Invested.”