A closer look
Wall Street exists primarily to convince you that guys in $3,000 suits are mathematically smarter than a captive primate. In 1973, Princeton economist Burton Malkiel claimed a blindfolded monkey throwing darts at a newspaper's financial pages could select a portfolio that would do just as well as one carefully selected by experts. In numerous subsequent experiments by journalists and researchers, dart-throwing monkeys (and random number generators) routinely outperformed top-tier hedge fund managers. You are paying high management fees to be out-traded by a macaque.
