A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market - John Paulos (3.5 of 5 Shares of WorldCom)

Sorry to leave these blank posts floating out here for so long. Embarrassing, no? I suppose it's kind of like walking around in public with your zipper down. I've spent the last week trying to adjust to Utah life, return to work and start school. Tonight is my first break. Oh well. So it goes.

When I saw this book at the library a few months ago, I was anticipating a John Nash Beautiful Mind experience...well...not quite. Not that exciting. Instead, you get to hear Mr. Paulos whine several times about his dumb decision to buy WorldCom at it's peak and then the dumber decision to hold it until he had lost almost all of his money. Hm...poor guy...probably made it all back from publishing this book.

It's not all bad. You will get some interesting discussions of the probabilities surrounding the buying and selling of stocks. Some knowledge of calculus might be needed to follow all of the mathematical computations, but he explains everything in basic terms at the end. He also spends a lot of time covering the psychological aspects of investing.

If you don't go in expecting too high of a return, you'll probably enjoy this book. Cheers.