I AM ESPECIALLY GRATEFUL to the many individuals who provided the data necessary to update the empirical analyses that support the recommendations in this book. Today, fifty years after the first edition of A Random Walk Down Wall Street, I believe even more strongly in the book’s original thesis. The data drawn from the past half century of investing experience clearly support the view that broad-based indexing is an optimal strategy for wealth management.
My debts of gratitude to those mentioned in earlier editions continue. In addition, I must mention the names of a number of people who were particularly helpful in making special contributions to this anniversary edition. Kristen Perleberg of the Leuthold Group provided updated calculations that help explain the historical patterns of security returns. Larry Swedroe shared his data on the factor structure of security returns and the historical results from explicitly considering the environmental, social, and governance aspects of portfolio investments. Jeremy Schwartz and Jeremy Siegel updated their calculations of stock returns in the long run. Scott Donaldson provided recent quotes for annual returns.
Andrew Shuman of the Vanguard Group collected mutual fund data underlying the calculations for many of the charts and simulations supporting the investing recommendations in these pages. Research help was also provided by my Princeton undergraduate assistant Shazra Raza. James Lange supported this anniversary edition in many ways.
My association with W. W. Norton remains a superb collaboration, and I thank Brendan Curry and Caroline Adams for their indispensable assistance in bringing this edition to publication.
My wife, Nancy Weiss Malkiel, has made by far the most important contributions to the successful completion of the past nine editions. In addition to providing the most loving encouragement and support, she read carefully through various drafts of the manuscript and made innumerable suggestions that clarified and vastly improved the writing. She continues to be able to find errors that have eluded me and a variety of proofreaders and editors. Most important, she has brought incredible joy to my life. No one more deserves the dedication of a book than Nancy and her second best friend, Piper.
Burton G. Malkiel
Princeton University
July 2022