I finished Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book Fooled By Randomness. I'd previously read The Black Swan by him. Even though it's his second book, I would refer it to anyone before Fooled by Randomness.

Fooled is a dense book, as close to a philosophical treatise as I will probably ever read. I appreciate the content, though. Taleb uses anecdotes, hypotheticals, and his own experience as a trader to argue that when it comes to areas with a lot of uncertainty and randomness (the market, etc) that success is not necessarily indicative of actual merit. (He also argues that there are many places where randomness doesn't affect success. A good chef tonight is probably a good chef tomorrow. A good dentist is probably a good dentist. But a good trader today may not be a good trader tomorrow.)

One of his many thought arguments: if you take 10,000 traders and had them trade randomly every year, while eliminating everyone who loses money at the end of the year, in 10 years you will have a handful of people who made money every year. The trades were random, so the handful left were just lucky.

His point: how is that distinguishable from our current marketplace? Is Warren Buffett who he is because he is so good at investing, or because out of thousands and thousands of traders, someone was bound to get it right? And if we can't tell how good a trader is, why are we giving them our money to manage?

I enjoyed the book, thought it took awhile to work through. Again, I would recommend The Black Swan as a better look on the idea of randomness and our reaction to it before this one.