1) Some of us can "beat the market", but obviously in aggregate we can't all do so. Consequently any claims that a certain approach will beat the market has to be approached with skepticism.

2) There are 2 "Free Lunches" in investing that can improve risk adjusted returns for ALL market participants: Diversification and Expense minimization.

3) Certainly methods should be disclosed, and just as importantly expected past and potential future performance characteristics (I.e. Volatility, Max Drawdown, Sharpe/Sortino Ratios, etc). Often investors adopt an investment strategy without having that information, and are surprised when volatility and drawdowns raise their ugly head.

Hilarious. Great nod to Asimov.

1) Agree. However, a starting point is important. If an investor is misinformed and thinks that nobody can beat the market, he (being rational) will not even try to beat it. But if he knows that it is though hard but possible, he will at least look for a proper fund [manager]. Whether he succeeds or not is another big story.

2) Partially agree. Expense minimization may be different. You can pay little for a miserable performance. A friend from Guinea told me how they have their high-way built. The budget is very restrictive, so neither European, nor American companies agree to build. Only Chinese do... In a year the high-way is kaputt.

And the Chinese company says "very little money = very little job"!

Optimal Expense minimization is in choosing optimal portfolio manager reward, not just buy paying less fees.

As to diversification, keeping a portfolio too diversified may hurt the performance!

3) Yes

The whole idea that nobody can beat the market is a direct derivation from the EMT. The market can and is regularly beaten, but to do so requires securities that are not well followed as the standard large cap securities that everyone trades. Examples of these securities that are hard to follow can be classified:

1. Securities with extremely complex businesses, the analysts cannot follow these in great detail because the complexity of the business baffles them. An example is Blackstone (BX) with its 1400+ page annual report.

2. Very small securities or securities that have little following (new spinoff, IPO, small sized company, companies in areas that are of little interest to analysts, etc...). An example of these is FSAM.

3. Securities that have some internal issue that is not easily understood by the analysts can lead to poor analysis. Example KHC, confusing 3Q earnings presentation, thick accents, confusing answers to questions.

Lack of information = mispricing opportunities.

EMT is an assumption not entirely TRUE (like Fama said in http://review.chicagobooth.edu/economics/2016/video/are-markets-efficient). So alpha zero-sum game, which is a derivation of EMT, is not entirely TRUE. Time Discontinous Investment (Long, Short and Cash) shows empirically that alpha can be created systematically. It is an arbitrage inside the market (long vs. short) and outside between (as a whole) markets and cash, like Keynes said in 1936. In order to test and validate these arbitrages you need analytics outside the market like fundamental value (for security selection) or "deeper information" capabilities, than EMT assumption, in order to long or short the market OR to prefer or not the lquidity.

Love it. Made me laugh

I am currently building a search engine for robo advisors as well as signal providers. Its beta version is www.allmyfx.com

He track and record every signals/recommendations in forex pairs by hese advisors.

Problem: Every user 's fate is attached with single robo advisory for which he pays.

solution: just follow those advisor whose last 8-10 predictions were correct. realtime scrutiny of their performance .

sujith s s

>just follow those advisor whose last 8-10 predictions were correct

What is the probability to get a HEAD by coin flipping, given you got all HEADs by previous 10 flips? :)

its 63 % if 1000 participants toss 10 times. 63% likelihood to achieve a straight all heads or tails.

With guidance from PHd mathematics professors, machine learning experts We are using similar machine learning algo to find that consistent pattern . Prototype is ready at www.allmyfx.com . A feedback or criticism of idea would be appreciated .

Vasily Nekrasov thats a very interesting take on Robo advisory especially the law 2 .it just made my day .Some of these robo advisors are selling people dreams and not adding any "real" value to investors .

Mthandazo Duke Khumalo, "Some of these robo advisors are selling people dreams", yes, unfortunately selling dreams and hope is much easier than selling knowledge and bitter truth.