Invested examines the perennial and nefarious appeal of financial
advice manuals.
Who hasn't wished for a surefire formula for riches and a ticket to the
good life? For three centuries, investment advisers of all kinds, legit
and otherwise, have guaranteed that they alone can illuminate the golden
pathway to prosperity--despite strong evidence to the contrary. In fact,
too often, they are singing a siren song of devastation. And yet we keep
listening.
Invested tells the story of how the genre of investment advice
developed and grew in the United Kingdom and the United States, from its
origins in the eighteenth century through today, as it saturates our
world. The authors analyze centuries of books, TV shows, blogs, and
more, all promising techniques for amateur investors to master the ways
of the market: from Thomas Mortimer's pathbreaking 1761 work, Every Man
His Own Broker, through the Gilded Age explosion of sensationalist
investment manuals, the early twentieth-century emergence of a
vernacular financial science, and the more recent convergence of
self-help and personal finance. Invested asks why, in the absence of
evidence that such advice reliably works, guides to the stock market
have remained perennially popular. The authors argue that the appeal of
popular investment advice lies in its promise to level the playing
field, giving outsiders the privileged information of insiders. As
Invested persuasively shows, the fantasies sold by these writings are
damaging and deceptive, peddling unrealistic visions of easy profits and
the certainty of success, while trying to hide the fact that there is no
formula for avoiding life's economic uncertainties and calamities.
