If the Devil Takes the Hindmost, Who Will the Devil Take in 2025–2030?

Lessons for today's market in speculation, uncertainty, and greed from Edward Chancellor's classic book.

When I first started my investment and business career in 1999 and knew absolutely nothing and read even less, one of the first books (still in my top 20) I read was The Devil Take the Hindmost by Edward Chancellor.

“The devil take the hindmost” is an old proverb meaning those who lag behind (financially or otherwise) will be left to suffer the consequences. In markets, it reflects how speculators rush in, hoping not to be the last to exit before the crash.

Chancellor’s book is not a manual for avoiding speculation—it’s a panoramic study of how we, as a species, get swept into the same cycles again and again. Speculative manias, he shows, are not aberrations—they are features of financial history.

“There is nothing new, except what is forgotten.” – Marie Antoinette (quoted in Chancellor’s preface)