THE EFFICIENT MARKET MYTH How a Beautiful Theory Met an Ugly Market

Wall Street's most powerful idea says the market already knows everything - that no investor, no analyst, and no amount of research can reliably beat it. The evidence for this is real, and it has made index funds the smartest investment most people will ever make.

So why did that same "efficient" market lose ninety percent of its value between 1929 and 1932? Why did it fall twenty-two percent in a single afternoon in 1987, for no fundamental reason at all? Why did it spend two years pricing companies with no profits as if they were worth billions - twice?

And what does it mean that the U.S. stock market in 2026 is more concentrated in a handful of companies, and more expensive by historical valuation measures, than at almost any point in its history - outside of the two years that preceded its worst crashes?

The Efficient Market Myth traces the efficient market hypothesis from a forgotten 1900 doctoral thesis through Eugene Fama's Nobel Prize-winning formalization, tests it against a century of market history, weighs it against the behavioral economists and Austrian theorists who challenged it, and applies the full verdict to the market you are invested in right now.

This is not a book that tells you to panic, or a book that tells you the market is always right. It is a clear-eyed accounting of when markets work exactly as advertised - and when the most dangerous words in finance become this time it's different.

Written for investors who want to understand their money, not just park it.

Robert F. Geissler is an independent author and publisher writing at the intersection of economics, history, and markets. A retired law enforcement lieutenant with a B.A. in Economics from Rowan University, he draws on the Austrian and Chicago schools of economic thought in his work for Think Tank Media LLC.