The Fed announces that its going to lower interest rates.
5 minutes later India declares nuclear war on Pakistan...
Well then I guess everything is just random, now isn't it? Ever since the big bang, particles are just randomly going here and there. The girls I happen to date in my life will be random -- the jobs I get will be random -- the people I meet at the grocery store will be random.
In fact, it is suffice to say that everything that occurs in nature is really "random."
Here is a freebie for you. Anything labeled "random" is just another way of saying, "I don't know all the variables well enough to accurately predict above 50/50 what will happen during each occurrence."
I'm no math idiot, either. I have gone up to Number Theory, so you can bring out all the equations you want -- although the equations may prove a random distribution, you aren't accounting for extraneous variables that are constantly present in any given system.
Take for instance the BLACK-SCHOLES option pricing model. This equation bares a large resemblance to another standard heat dissipation equation. The model applies well to "MACRO-LEVEL" events. However, does this model always accurately predict what will happen on a micro-scale with each stock? Of course not! Do you think Sullivan's nephew gave a shit about your randomness when he was buying put after put in Worldcom?
You could easily prove, as you just did, that given macro-data on a large data-set and excluding OTHER VERY IMPORTANT MICRO DATA-SET VARIABLES that stocks and futures are indeed more-or-less random.
The key here is that your conclusion is flawed because you over-generalize your hypothesis on a specific data-set without considering other variables that would affect the overall testing procedure.
I don't know how else to explain it -- but good traders are not just a fluke on a bell-curve as your data would suggest!
If you were watching futures on September 11'th, 2001, you would have noticed that they went down after the first plane hit the tower. Since it wasn't known at that time that it was the beginning of a large terrorist event, the market did not react strongly at that point. The "mainstream" information at that point was that it could have just been a plane that "accidently" hit one of the towers -- perhaps a small Cesna with a drunk pilot.
However, localized information would have given you a 99% probability of making the right play in the market. Someone somewhere in N.Y. City saw that it was indeed a 747 type airplane that creamed straight into that building. Whoever shorted the market at that point, acting on "specific information" that your model excludes, would have made a lot of money.
The point is that the markets appear random until you find some variable that you can exploit. The best variable is inside knowledge of something, but since most of us cannot obtain that, you have to dig deep until you find something that apparently works.
Your equations only prove that macro-events in the market are random without considering small but very important micro-variables.
I hope this helps you.
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