The question is how did they make $100m ? If it wasn't high probability (through market making), it was likely being at the right place at the right time in a cowboy betting.
But trends do exist month to month etc which are quite easy to spot and take advantage e.g due to the carry trade unwind a long position in early October after the trend had identified itself (not guess it) would have paid off a profit $25 000 up to today - from initial margin requirement of $6000 - in fact back the it was lower - The edge comes in on - how you identify the trend, risk, entry and exit. its really no magic
It would be no magic if there were very few people trying to do it, i.e. not much competition. Then there really would be nice, predictable trends with not much noise and whipsaw. But there are hundreds of thousands of people (if not millions) trying to catch these trends which make them what they are - unpredictable even in a probabilistic sense.
I would say that: 1) efficient market hypothesis predicts that a FEW people will actually do well in the longterm 2) Some are lucky, such as those who may have heavily leveraged a stock index and rode it during the long upterm, and just happened to have gotten in low enough not to be kciked out by one of the bears 3) I would say the market is STRONGLY efficient, not perfectly. But it is much harder to make consistent money than people here claim, as borne out by a number of studies od Day Traders, including in Taiwan. 4) Most of the people claiming to be profitable on ET are either paper traders, or confuse 3 months of winnings with skill. But there are some. 5) I have seen a couple of regularly available methods that work, but like others, do not plan to give it away to people unwilling to do their own work and screen time. [/size=3]
If you are unable to see through the random data - then yes I agree with you, its like walking into a forest in the night - there is no hope you will get where you want. The difference is we walk into the forest with night vision googles - not perfect but we see the trees, we fall on traps we dont see but we get up and move on