A Random Walk Down Wall Street, written by Burton Gordon Malkiel, a Princeton University economist, is a book on the subject of stock markets which popularized the random walk hypothesis.

Malkiel argues that asset prices typically exhibit signs of a random walk, and thus one cannot consistently outperform market averages.

A practical popularization is The Random Walk Guide to Investing: Ten Rules for Financial Success.

Through detailed analysis, he notes significant flaws in both techniques, concluding that, for most investors, following these methods will produce inferior results compared to passive strategies.

Malkiel has a similar critique for methods of selecting actively managed mutual funds based upon past performances.