I don't understand how an "Adapt or Die" argument can recommend one to learn strategies depending upon specialist system inefficiencies. "Adapt or Die" is an unchallengeable truism. It leaves unresolved the question as to the particular direction in which one should adapt. It seems to me that the specialist system is in its twilight, so that the most fruitful adaptation would be one pointing away from it.
The Bright family, based on the links Don posted, apparently sees the NYSE game as just their strategy for now, because of the opportunities it yields now. It seems that when the NYSE frat party is finally broken up once and for all, either because they are raided by the cops, or the beer kegs all run dry, the Brights are prepared to move on to the next opportunity, just as they have moved from one opportunity to the next, decade after decade.
I think this approach will continue to work, for the Bright family. I don't think it is workable for the vast majority of newer traders. The vast majority of traders will never enjoy the flexibility, adaptability, sophistication, and resources possessed by the Brights. The vast majority of traders will never become profitable, neither on NYSE, nor anywhere else. Most traders who do learn how to profit, in a way depending on the specialist system, or in any other way, do so at a great cost of time invested and trading capital lost, before they get it right. If they make this enormous investment, and succeed in generating profits, but then quickly find their method no longer works because of dependence upon the arcane and byzantine procedures of a system of parasitic corruption, they may not have sufficient resources to go back to the drawing board and find another profitable method. People like the Brights can afford to take this risk, but not small new unsophisticated traders.
Traders seeking their first profitable method need to adapt in a sustainable direction. Dependence upon specialist inefficiencies, for people lacking the flexibility of the Brights, is not sustainable. It is like our society's dependence upon fossil-fuels. It is a scheme which progressively erodes the resources and the environment upon which it depends. It is a scheme which emits foul-smelling, toxic, and greenhouse gases, thereby destabilizing the climate, and steadily increasing the temperature, so that traders find themselves skating on thin ice melting faster than Greenland, and facing inundation from rising sea levels.
Scientists believe that the dinosaurs, and most other species on other Earth, abruptly perished in a mass extinction resulting from Earth's collision with a massive asteriod, filling the skies with matter which temporarily blocked the sun's rays and disrupted photosynthesis. The age of dinosaurs gave way to the age of mammals, because mammals adapted to the new climates and climactic instabilities and food supplies and disruptions, but dinosaurs could not. We can now see another asteroid hurtling toward the NYSE. Getting out of the way would seem to be the logical consequence flowing from a slogan like "Adapt or Die", for small new traders lacking the Bright family's timing and ability to jump off the train tracks at the last possible moment.
