★ Why You Shouldn't Let a Monkey Pick Your Stocks

""A blindfolded monkey throwing darts at a newspaper’s financial pages could beat most experts." Princeton professor Burton Malkiel uttered that slam against Wall Street stock traders back in 1973, riffing that despite their fancy-pants degrees, professional traders can’t predict the future any better than ... well ... a blindfolded monkey. His book around that topic became a mega-bestseller and investing classic. Evidently I love wagering real-life money on ridiculous experiments. So one year ago, I put his statement to the test. Well, kinda. I had trouble finding a monkey. And I can’t train my cats to throw darts. (Grrow!) So I blindfolded myself, flung darts at a list of stocks, and bought the first 10 that I hit."