Why Random Stock Picking?

Random stock picking can be a valuable tool for investors looking to:

• Discover new investment opportunities outside their usual scope
• Reduce cognitive biases in stock selection
• Build a more diverse portfolio
• Challenge their investment assumptions

How It Works

The Random Stock Picker:

• Uses a complete list of stocks from the NASDAQ
• Provides direct links to Robinhood and Yahoo Finance for quick research
• Generates truly random selections for unbais exploration

History

This project was first built in 2018, inspired by an economics class discussion on investment strategies. The concept draws from fascinating research showing that diverse portfolios - and sometimes even random stock selection - can outperform carefully curated picks. In fact, a famous study showed that simulated monkey-picked portfolios consistently beat market indexes by an average of 1.7% per year since 1964!

This builds on Burton Malkiel's 1973 claim in "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" that "a blindfolded monkey throwing darts at a newspaper's financial pages could select a portfolio that would do just as well as one carefully selected by experts." Research has shown that random selection can sometimes outperform expert picks, mainly because it eliminates human bias and naturally tends toward portfolio diversification.