Fooled by Randomness

I picked up this book back when I spent all day staring at crypto charts, and the timing was perfect. I'd just had a few good weeks and was starting to think I was a genius. Taleb took that apart in a few chapters. He knocked me off my high horse, in a very good way.

The idea that stuck with me most is looking at alternative histories. It's not just the result you got that matters; it's how many bad results were equally possible from the same decision. The Russian roulette image sums it up well: whoever made money pulling the trigger isn't a good investor, they're a survivor.

After that, I could never look at profit screenshots in trading groups the same way again (and mind you, I ran one). A lot of success content out there is just the visible tip of a crowd of people who did exactly the same and went bust. I took a lot from this book into life, and today, more mature, I reread passages and see how much it speaks to what I now study in a more structured way about heuristics and biases.

A criticism of the style: Taleb is arrogant, rambles and picks fights with half of academia mid-text, and in some chapters that gets in the way more than it helps. Some arguments also only reach their full strength in his later books.

It was my first Taleb and it's what made me go after the others. I recommend it to anyone who trades the markets, especially those who are winning.