Can investors get rich by looking at their investments through a ‘gender lens?’ (original) (raw)

I’m generally skeptical about investment schemes that say they’ll beat the market, because if picking winning stocks was so easy, then everyone would be doing it. And, if everyone’s doing it, then it’s impossible to beat the market.

That’s the basic idea behind the rational expectations school of thought, which basically says that you’ll never see a $100 bill lying on the sidewalk because someone else would have picked it up before you got there. In investment terms, it says that investors can’t systematically beat the market in the short-term because stock prices essentially follow an unpredictable, random walk (perhaps with a trend).