The stock market isn't a game; it isn't designed and it continuously evolves.
That's exactly what I meant by odds; they always win because the odds of the games are in their favor.
> The stock market isn't a game
It's a game in the same sense that life itself is a game.
> it isn't designed
The mechanisms that fit all the pieces together are very much designed by humans. True the behavior of the market isn't designed; it's an emergent property of the complex system we call "the markets."
> it continuously evolves
Yes, but change is also the constant. What underlies that change is supply and demand.
Of course you're free to disagree. But if you'd like to learn more about the not-100%-accurate analogy I described in abbreviated form, the source is here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/253516.Trading_in_the_Zon...
Edit: Good reading on "life as a game": http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/189989.Finite_and_Infinit...
Casinos don't try to predict the future of every spin of the wheel or roll of the dice. Every individual game is random. But over a large enough sample size (number of games played), the odds are not random.
The same principle is at play in trading the markets, except the "odds" are determined by the traders' skill - their "edge." Which is roughly some combination of access to the right people, access to better information (where better might but not necessarily mean quicker), and experience (gut feelings, hunches, what-have-you).
So the real question is, can machine learning algorithms develop an "edge", and if so, can they stay solvent long enough to do so.