data mining is not the holy grail. If Goldman Sachs cannot predict the market with all the resources at their disposal....phd quantitative analysts, talented programmers, custom computer systems, multi-million dollar budgets for research, etc., then it is safe to assume that you are barking up the wrong tree.
I think the truth is there is no holy grail, only a long term strategy that takes what the market gives with minimal drawdowns. And no i'm not talking about buy and hold either, i'm talking about buy a basket of what you think is good stuff, sell the stuff that goes bad, keep the stuff that works. That's all there is to the stock market really, but its so simple that most people can't do it, they would rather build Beowulf clusters.
There are real strategies that work with stocks, only you have to accept market returns, not shoot for "trading for a living" with $10,000 of capital. That is the real fools gold. Take the money and brain power you would put into a beowulf cluster and learn how to trade stocks.