1987 crash was caused partially by portfolio insurance, a "risk reducing" strategy that involved selling index futures as your the market declined. The idea was to protect your profit. Even better than a stop loss. Whopse... that didn't work. Don't try to beat the market, just take what it gives, and use good MM to make sure you don't give it back.
Ok lol I'll surrender the '87 crash, I don't know enough about it. But you say beating the market is taking what it gives you. Is the goal of trading not to take what the market gives you, but on shorter time frames in order to capitalize on overall larger aggregate moves? As long as good money management is used to protect gains, is this not beating the market? I just wanted to post my quote I put on the top of my trading rules after my first week of trading about a month back: "Your skills will decide how much money you make, but your rules will decide how much money you keep" Thought it went pretty well with the whole money management deal. I have to read it every day before trading lol.