Matthew C Klein, Columnist

Sony's PlayStation Taught Greatest Trading Lesson

Almost 14 years ago, I learned what it means for something to be priced into the markets.

November 22, 2013 at 7:15 PM UTC

Matthew C. Klein writes for Bloomberg View about the economy and financial markets. He previously wrote for the Economist magazine and its economics blog, Free Exchange. Before that, Klein was a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he spent more than two years studying the history of the Federal Reserve and the intellectual history of monetary economics for an upcoming book by Sebastian Mallaby. He also worked at Bridgewater Associates, where he studied the economies of Central and Eastern Europe and advised institutional investors on asset-liability management. Klein has a bachelor's degree in history from Yale University. Originally from Chicago, he lives in New York.

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

Folksy stock-pickers like to say that you should "invest in what you know," but that's actually terrible advice. I know this because I tried to profit from this principle almost 14 years ago and instead ended up losing a bunch of money on Sony Corp. shares.

I'm reminded of that episode because Sony has just released its latest game console: the PlayStation 4. So far, the system has soldextraordinarily well, although that isn't enough to keep the bean-counters at the Financial Times' Lex column from declaring that Sony's electronics business "is worth less than nothing."