Beat the Crowd

In this book, bestselling author Ken Fisher returns to his roots to explore what it really means to be a crowd-beating contrarian investor.

Many misunderstand contrarianism. They believe it simply means doing the opposite of everyone else. If the masses are bullish, the contrarians turn bearish, and vice versa.

What few realize is that these so-called contrarians form their own crowd, one that behaves just as herd-like as the masses they’re trying to outsmart. Avoiding the crowd’s follies means seeing through both crowds, thinking differently and discovering viewpoints neither one can fathom.

As Founder and Executive Chairman of Fisher Investments, Ken Fisher oversees assets for more than 210,000 individuals, families, businesses and institutions around the world. In this, his 11th book, he shares the philosophy and tactics he uses to advise clients.

Learn to Invest Smarter

In Beat the Crowd, Ken Fisher shows how you can invest smarter by thinking differently, tuning out the noise and avoiding the mistakes the crowd repeats again and again.

Why does the crowd get markets wrong more often than not? Sometimes their brains trick them, whether through political biases or other behavioral traps. Other times it’s because they forget markets price in widely known information pretty efficiently, and they let false fears drive their decisions. Here are just a few of the pitfalls the book covers:

1. Assuming one political party or ideology is best or worst for stocks—tempting, and easy to do, but what if they’re all just a bunch of equally self-interested politicians?
2. Letting headlines drive your decisions—our noisy 24/7 media makes a living selling fear, warning that everything from wobbling economic data to disease scares and regional conflict will be the death of stocks. But what if stocks have already priced in whatever fear they’re selling?
3. Believing dreary long-term forecasts endanger stocks today—pundits argue over whether things like US debt, global warming and income inequality will doom investors down the road. But are stocks really looking that far out? Do they care about pure sociology?
4. Forgetting history—our financial memories are terrible. Old panics, bear markets and bouts of volatility fade from most people’s minds. But market history is important and holds the keys we need to navigate the future.
5. Missing the elephant in the room—often the truth is simple and staring us in the face, but we can’t see it because we’re too caught up in the noise.
6. Extrapolating the recent past forward—is the trend really your friend?

To help you sidestep these and other pitfalls, Beat the Crowd guides you through real-world issues past, present and future, showing you ways to train your brain to see what everyone else misses. Thinking differently isn’t hard, and it doesn’t take a finance degree or years of classroom training to do it. All you need are a few basic tricks and sharpened instincts to question media hype and the things “everyone knows.” This book teaches those principles and shows you ways to apply them, so you can start making better investment decisions today.