Where Are the Customers' Yachts?
The title comes from an old story about a visitor to New York who is shown the yachts of the bankers and brokers and innocently asks where the customers' yachts are. Fred Schwed, who worked on Wall Street before the 1929 crash, uses that joke as his starting point for a gentle, funny takedown of the financial business. He argues that brokers and fund managers are very good at collecting fees and not nearly so good at beating the market, and that most predictions are worth little. Written in 1940, the book stays fresh because the human behavior it describes has not changed. Warren Buffett has called it the funniest book ever written about investing.
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The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A former Wall Street trader's funny, skeptical look at the gap between what the financial industry promises and what it actually delivers.
It comes from a story about a tourist shown the yachts of Wall Street bankers and brokers who asks where the customers' yachts are. The point is that the industry profits more reliably than its clients do.
Where Are the Customers' Yachts? was written by Fred Schwed, published in 1940 by Simon & Schuster.
Where Are the Customers' Yachts? is 208 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Where Are the Customers' Yachts? takes most readers 3 to 5 hours to finish.
Where Are the Customers' Yachts? is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
