"Some of the topics covered in Searching for Alpha include the following: the three reasons why the mutual fund industry will always underperform the overall stock market; the well-known economist who, by comparing the stock market to a "beauty contest," made a fortune as a speculator; how a highly successful football betting scheme can be utilized to profitably trade stocks; how to profit from the idiosyncrasies of human behavior; what the waxing-and-waning tendency of oil wells can tell us about the impact of technology on the investment management industry; the commonalities between catching monkeys in India and avoiding taxes on investments in the United States; and the profit potential of value stocks for the next decade."--Jacket.