Once in a while new concepts pop up. some ar valid, some are not, some are better than they sound, some worse. As far as I understand the basic concept of edge testes versus random, is a very good way to find systems, yet I doubt it's the one and only way to judge systems.
consider you build a highly overfitted system with whatever strategy you want using twenty parameters. Or go even further and train a neural net with too many neurons - the ultimate overfit. now compare the entry points against random entry. will it prove that the neurons have an edge?
either i haven't got the basic concept (could easily be) or the edge/random discussion is more valid in finding strategies, not in judging them. BTW this is by far the more important issue.
IMO there is no and will never be a way to avoid a lot of hindsight in judging systems. few parameters, many trades, long testing period ability to stand stress in terms of trading costs and more things of that kind. one of those could easily be the random entry test.
IMHO looking for edges using correlation requires comparison to random numbers since the correlations are very often too low to be significant in itself. without random comparison you would end nowhere.
just a point of view.
peace
