Economists Have Much To Be Humble About.

First, Those Who Disagree With Market Efficiency Simply Assert That It Stands To Common Sense That Greater Effort To Get Facts And Greater Acumen In Analyzing Those Facts Will Pay Off In Better Performance Somehow Measured. (by This Logic, Cure For Cancer Must Have Been Found By 1955).

Second, They [those Who Disagree With Market Efficiency] Always Claim They Know A Man, A Bank, Or A Fund That Does Do Better. Alas, Anecdotes Are Not Science. And Once Wharton School Dissertations Seek To Quantify The Performers, These Have A Tendency To Evaporate Into The Air - Or, At Least, Into Statistically Insignificant T-statistics.

Let Those Who Will Write The Nation's Laws, If I Can Write Its Textbooks.

The Sad Truth Is That It Is Precisely Those Who Disagree Most With The Hypothesis Of Efficient Market Pricing Of Stocks, Those Who Pooh-pooh Beta Analysis And All That, Who Are Least Able To Understand The Analysis Needed To Test That Hypothesis.

The Recent Market Run-up That Appreciated Run-of-the- Mill Shares Also Chanced To Send Up Those Token Gold Holdings. Pure Luck, Undeserved And Unlikely To Reoccur. Good Questions Outrank Easy Answers.