It Was a Very Good Year: Extraordinary Moments in Stock Market History

Popular wisdom holds that, over time, the stock market outperforms any other method of investment, the key words being "over time"; folks who look to the stock market to get rich quickly are definitely playing with fire. Still, for those who like to live on the edge, Martin S. Fridson's book It Was a Very Good Year might offer some helpful hints for predicting a bumper year on Wall Street. Firstly, there are certainly patterns--most years in which stocks performed extraordinarily well began with extremely depressed stock prices--but never any guarantees. Fridson, an analyst and managing director at Merrill Lynch, illustrates this principle with plenty of anecdotes about those who struck it rich--and those who didn't. It Was a Very Good Year offers interesting and entertaining information about what makes the stock market tick but presents no ironclad system for making it big on Wall Street.