Despite changing times, investors tend to cling to old methods and old ways of thinking about things. This book takes the opposite view - it wonders if everything we thought we knew about investing was wrong. It takes the most common and widely held beliefs and presents an opposing viewpoint. Too many times I have seen people agree on points where they have no basis, no data, nothing to support their position except that "everyone knows that's the way it is." At more than one conference I have challenged these notions, asking for support for their belief. Seldom is there anything to back up their statements. Hopefully these people come away with the realization that they should do a little research (or at least a little thinking) before jumping on the bandwagon to agree with anything that builds momentum and consensus. This is not to say that they were wrong, they might very well have been correct. But they would have been correct by chance, not because they independently arrived at a similar conclusion based on data, theory or preponderance of evidence.