Seeing RBS's stock price at 12pence makes you think what if a year ago i had invested in RBS a large part of my savings, when it's price was around 400pence or 2 years ago when it was around 700. In this context "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" is very relative since it is a highly influential book about investing in the stock market. In a knutshell Burton Malkiel, a Princeton Economist, explains that the stock market is so efficient that it is a waste of time for the typical investor to try to exploit any inefficiencies. His best bet is to simply buy a diversified
portfolio heavy on index funds that includes a large number of different companies (eg S&P500) and hold on it. The efficient market theory states that all knowable information about a stock's value is already reflected in its share price and this is what Malkiel holds as true. Even if you manage to beat the market chances are that the transaction costs of your trading will eat up the extra returns.
Bottom line: you can't predict future stock prices!
Apart from th is, Malkiel provides a lot of investing information around the pricing of the stock market, which you don't have to be an expert to understand. He also cites some of the financial "crazes" in history including tulipomania, where even poor people sold their possessions in order to speculate in the tulip market, giving an insight into the irrational investor behavior that causes stock market bubbles. Although originally published in 1973 it has been updated many times with the last edition in 2007. I think a new edition that would include a chapter on the recent economic crisis would be quite useful !
PS You will find no get rich quick scheme here!
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