Can algorithmic trading systems beat human traders?

I used to play tournament poker myself, relatively successfully, and I found poker had more to do with patience and self control than anything else...computers beat the hell out of humans in terms of patience and self control

 

The key is the computer must be adaptible. Any static system will eventually lose

 

And what do the human traders do? Get one right every once in a while. I've never seen any human trader consistently forecast long term moves in any market. Reminds me of Paulson, got the 2008 move correct and did nothing ever since. I've yet to see anyone make 1-2 year predictions on supply and demand successfully.

 

yes, that is exactly my point, computer is good at games which are horrible analogies to the market

 

About computers. There non exist a computer that have been never beated on chess.

 

so the trick would be to find that part of the market that is just like chess and let the computer trade it

 

...or use a different computer.

 

It seems a lot of you are making the assumption that the computer can only do one thing, and are forgetting that modern computers have far more memory and far faster processors than any human..It isn't algorithms vs human...its human with algorithm against human without. My money is on the dude with the algorithm who knows how to make it dance

 

its really hard for a machine to get a truly random number

 

Intuition is huge, but western people don't know how to use it. Go to India or China, those people know what is intuition and how to use it.