One of the finest goals in the history of the England national side, it just warrants showing but what does a piece of footballing genius have to do with investment?
Gascoigne was the master of the unpredictable, on and off the field, and the random nature of his moments of inspiration mirrors the movement of stock prices. Just as defender Colin Hendry had no clue he was about to have the ball popped over his head, advocates of random walk theory argue analysts cannot predict the movement of stock prices.
In his seminal book, A Random Walk down Wall Street (1975), Burton K. Malkiel, made the famous point that, taken to its logical conclusion, random walk theory meant that a blindfolded monkey throwing darts at the financial pages had as much chance of picking winning stocks as the experts. For those magical few seconds at the old Wembley in 1996, a visually restricted primate would have had no less chance of stopping Gascoigne.
