@ktmtrader, Thank you for the forceful reminder. More importantly, thanks for introducing the forum to Marcos. He seems like a skilled and pragmatic researcher/practitioner similar to Euan Sinclair.
All of the great, or notable, traders in history...are somewhat of gamblers; You won't essentially get nowhere...by just being the house -- whatever that means. I agree with your second part though. KISS: keep it simple, stupid. -- Some of the best traders have a very simple strategy and mindset. they just churn that machine day in, day out. Alot of people make trading out to require complex Genius or something, which is rather silly.
here's a post by Marcos Lopez de Prado from 2 days ago: "How many times have you been told that math is not good enough for investing? That markets are way too complex for being modeled? That quant methods are no match to a discretionary trader's insight? The reality is, some of the most successful investors in history are pure mathematicians. You may have heard only a couple of names, because most of us work more than talk. We do not go to TV shows. We do not speak our book or lure investors into our trades. We do not have nice, feel-good, smart-sounding "stories" to tell to an audience of gamblers. We just make money, every week, through hard scientific work and sheer computing power. Many of those who claim that math is useless are the same people who return 5% a year before charging a 1%-3% management fee. If that's "The New Normal", I do not want to be a part of it. So, after many years listening to the same mantra from those charlatans, I have decided to speak out: Yes, math is the best way, and perhaps the only way, to beat the markets consistently. If you are a math student, do not let them discourage you. I was once in your shoes. I was told that fundamental analysis, technical analysis or financial theory were the only way. They are wrong. Mathematics is just formal logic, it is reason in its purest form. A quant is someone who restores objectivity to prices, by providing liquidity to an irrational trader. Our numbers will keep growing, and one day financial firms will be run like laboratories, where decisions will be based on scientific facts instead of guru-guesses. Volatility will be replaced with certainty, and society will achieve its full financial potential."