With all due respect to the members of this forum that's why I never invested any significant time into investment analysis and always thought of day traders as lucky gamblers or pathological ones.

I spent a good part of the 2000's studying and teaching (albeit a lowly TA) probability and psychometrics. What was very apparent even back then, was that even expert human beings were always out performed by computers on any pattern reading tasks. Human beings really suck as understanding and applying such concepts as regression towards the mean, base rates, or even generating a random set of numbers (it's really easy to pick out true random numbers than those made up by humans). Even in 2000 computers already were outperforming the best clinicians around accurate diagnoses. The only reason computers didn't take over this area (completely that is) is ethical issues and needing a bit of a fail safe.

Things like poker and chess are a little different because you have regulators limiting the technology on the competitive scene. But when it comes to investing there is no legitimate reason why it should be restricted. I mean does anyone really not believe alpha zero is being used to analyze the markets?

So ya it was always very apparently to me that outside of things related to insider knowledge there was just no way humans could compete on the investment front. There are of course exceptions where humans can provide great insight around long term trends but for short term technical analysis it seems to be a waste of time.

Also this guy says it much better than I can given as I previously stated am no expert in this field

My credentials. I have been trading stocks since 1989. After studying Computer Engineering at UNAM in Mexico I have worked 25 years at financial institutions there, in Spain and South America. I began trading with automated strategies in 1998. In 2013 left a Bank and founded a Start-Up, GAANNA, where the last two years attained a significant proven track record on real money, trading financial markets around the world. I have 28 years of experience playing with Genetic Algorithms & Neural Network Applications; hence the acronym of my startup: GAANNA. I broke myself twice & lost my marriage because this is a challenging and hazardous road. Let me candidly and humbly share lessons learned during this magnificent voyage.

Feeling succes was at hands reach, with almost three decades of experience, I founded and got funded Gvolution LTD, a London based Hedge Fund in 2015, just to see it blow up during Brexit due to lack of adherence to our own trading rules; since then I have kept human intervention to almost ZERO.

Lesson One: Do not allow any Human Bias and please do not ever employ human traders in any segment of your operating cycle. Keep order routing fully automated and 100% electronic. Our AI performs all trading decisions.

Lesson Two: You have to leave the creation of new and better trading algorithms to another algorithm, that is: no human being can keep up with the pace of change of modern markets: so rapidly and continuously evolving. Our core AI is a machine learning that regularly creates synthetic Trading Agents (TA’s) using Neural Networks and Genetic Algorithms. No strategy, algorithm or TA will hold good performance forever, trading strategies tend to decay over time, some faster than others. Some have a good run, fall from grace for a period and then retake virtuosity.

For these reasons another AI takes care of the continuous evaluation of all our Trading Algorithms providing a generous feedback for the Machine Learning process: we have hundreds of thousands Trading Agents based on a massive amount of Trading Algorithms. Services like Quantopian have some thousands of humans developing trading strategies on their own: I think is better to let "her" (our AI) create and learn from every one of the hundreds of thousands of TA’s she creates, performing in real life.

Lesson Three: do not use CAPM or Markowitz Theory on your foundation. Simply take a look at the performance of traditional Hedge Funds, and you will see that investing based on optimal correlation and efficient frontiers worked well in the 1970's. Not anymore. Create a new animal.

Lesson Four: Do not trade intra-day or with high levels of leverage. UHF algorithms will eat you alive, fast and furious regime changes in volatility will sink your vessel.

Lesson Five: Do not sell signals, courses or licence your technology if you reach a fruitful and mature level of automated trading, you will lose focus. Manage Assets only. Then manage your own assets only.

Lesson Six: Develop a rigorous back-testing process. Do not use off the shelf products to backtest your strategies: I think there is no way to produce a meaningful trading strategy if you do not understand how to backtest it appropriately and thoughtfully. Do not take shortcuts here.

Lesson Seven: Use only clean, professionally curated Market Data. Survivorship bias prevention of data is essential. Free is cheap and produces cheap results.

Finally, two warnings:

I - Money changes people: little produces little changes, large changes large, and If you have character flaws, addictions and/or obsessions sadfully for the worst. Money will only amplify them. Have yourself together; or getting there, to the large money, will tear you up with your suposedly loyalties and beloved ones.

II - Like a Curse, once your results start being frankly exceptional and consistent doubters, naysayers and haters will grow like the plague. Overwhelmed by frustration finally understood that as human as my clients are, this was a fundamental business model complexity that had to be solved. Unless you are well-known and a recognised Wall Street Quant Elite, nobody will ever believe you, no matter how audited, proven or true your track record is. My advice: let mouth to mouth be your brand recognition. The money will flow eventually, and Peace will begin to fill your mind, that is the true prize.

Dont lose yourself!

theres a lot of different types of trading, some of it is gamblier than others of course.

the one thing i can say with relative confidence after a few years of making this my primary focus more or less is that the people who are profitable, they are the ones that get in where they fit. they find their niche. different sorts of dispositions / personalities lend themselves to different flavors of fiscal gambling. finding which flavor suits you can be very expensive and discovering no flavor suits you is often how things shake out once the margin calls arrive.

but i love the challenge, what can i say. its a delicious itch to scratch.