Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets By Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Everyone wants to succeed in life. But what causes some of us to be more successful than others? Is it really down to skill and strategy – or something altogether more unpredictable?

This book is the bestselling sensation that will change the way you think about business and the world. It is all about luck: more precisely, how we perceive luck in our personal and professional experiences. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the markets – we hear an entrepreneur has ‘vision’ or a trader is ‘talented’, but all too often their performance is down to chance rather than skill. It is only because we fail to understand probability that we continue to believe events are non-random, finding reasons where none exist.

‘One of the smartest books of all time’ Fortune

‘An iconoclastic tour de force … nothing escapes his Exocets’ Evening Standard

‘Brilliant’ John Kay

‘Excellent and thought-provoking … an entertaining book’ Financial Times

‘Wall Street’s principal dissident’ Malcolm Gladwell