Debunkery: Learn It, Do It, and Profit From It—Seeing Through Wall Street's Money-Killing Myths

Ken Fisher, Founder, Executive Chairman and Co-Chief Investment Officer of Fisher Investments, is a self-made billionaire and ranks among America's wealthiest individuals.

For over 30 years (1984 to 2017), his monthly "Portfolio Strategy" column ran in Forbes magazine, making him the longest continuously running columnist in the magazine's history. Over that stretch he witnessed it all: the stock market crash of 1987, the great bull markets of the 1980s and 1990s, the Tech bubble of 2000 and the global market meltdown of 2008.

In Debunkery, Ken Fisher outlines some of the most common mistakes many, if not all, investors make and provides guidelines on ways to avoid them. From the false belief that bonds are safer than stocks to the equally false belief that budget surpluses are good for stocks, Ken takes a hard look at the data to debunk 50 investing myths and explains the flawed reasoning behind them.

What exactly is debunkery?

de•bun•ker•y
[dih-buhngk-ker-ee]
–noun
1. "Debunkery means unearthing truths, or at the very least, overturning common but widespread and frequently harmful market untruths, myths, and misperceptions most investors fall prey to."

- From Debunkery: Learn It, Do It, and Profit From It—Seeing Through Wall Street’s Money-Killing Myths

As Ken Fisher explains, "Let me say this book is not about some 'how-to' system for beating the market. It doesn't have a market-beating formula or even specifically tell you ways to invest. If you want a serious primer on overall investing strategy, I refer you to several of my other books. This one is about improving your odds and making fewer mistakes by deploying debunkery."

Across the book, Ken demonstrates debunkery on 50 of Wall Street’s widely accepted "truths," and details in an easily accessible (and entertaining) way why:

• Stop-losses could be renamed stop-gains.
• High unemployment isn’t bad for stocks.
• Massive trade deficits can be great for stocks.
• Stocks don’t care if the US dollar is strong or weak.
• Most retirees have a long, long time to invest.
• You should never listen to your "gut" when it comes to investing.
• You are almost certainly too terrified of government debt.

These are just a few debunkeries Ken Fisher shares to help you reduce your error rate as an investor.

Beyond exposing the myths, Ken hands you practical tactics so you can practice debunkery throughout your own investing career. Some examples:

• Think globally. It’s amazing how distorted an investors' worldview can get simply because they don’t look beyond their home borders. Think globally and a lot of misconceptions melt away. Swap thinking "outside the box" for thinking outside your country.
• Consider scale. Big numbers are always scary! That’s the stone age part of our still-evolving brains at work. Put those big numbers in proper context, though, and they often stop looking frightening and start feeling downright cuddly.
• Think counter-intuitively. Set aside common sense as a guidepost and be willing to look at things from the opposite direction.
• Check history. Endlessly, the media insists, "XYZ happened, and that’s bad," or "ABC would be good!" But is there any evidence that XYZ historically led to bad outcomes, or ABC to good ones? It’s usually easy to check, yet few think to. If something hasn’t reliably produced the expected result before, then people need to explain why this time will be so extraordinarily different. They usually can’t.

Make sure you get your copy of Debunkery today.