I think the truth lies somewhere inbetween these observations:
1. Free market price movement looks very similar to random movement.
2. Whenever you find a system that works, the market will adapt and anticipate it, and sooner or later the system will stop making money.
3. The market always proves tha majority wrong. (Could someone elaborate on this point? Maybe there are alternate ways to state it that might provide deeper insight.)
4. There are consistently profitable traders.
Maybe we should approach this whole question by means of a computer simulation.
What would really be interesting to know is whether or not trading success has to do with intelligence or level of abstraction.
We could also look at what kind of edge different traders have: MMs earn the spread, but is that a true edge? The rainman guy on the terminal in Chicago has the advantage of being a few milliseconds faster than everyone else.
I am more the rocket-science type of guy in that my trading system would not work without a decent computer and it would be rather difficult to explain.
What is your edge, each of you?
While we are at it, does anyone happen to know an argument for fibonacci retracements other than that the number of traders who believe in those numbers is high enough to make them relevant for the resulting price action?