Is beating the market as easy as it sounds?

A chess board has 8 by 8 squares, while there are just 6 different kinds of "soldiers".  Yet, after hundreds of years of thought by the smartest players in this world, there is not a single sure way to play.  There are no best styles or best strategy.  There are no sure-fire recipe to success.

If we cannot forecast accurately the course of a simple chess game, what makes some people think that they can do it for something as complex as the financial markets with millions of participants instead of just 2 players?

Look at the books and courses that are being sold.  You will see some preaching value investing, right next to one insisting on price action.  There are manuals on asset allocation and portfolio management.  Here is one demanding that their trend following system surely works and that you only need to spend 2 hours a day.  Another one saying its easy to turn $1,000 to $72,000.  Some call for trading futures intra-day as a source of income, while some advise long term investing in high yield instruments.

The usual formula is this.  Follow the methods of author or trainer, and you will achieve similar success.  This is a fundamentally flawed methodology, because thousands of other traders and investors has tried to follow and lost money.  They forget that the market is not dead, it is alive.  As in chess, you make a move, and someone is there playing the Black pieces.  When you enter into a trade, thousands of people are reacting to your entry.  And a strategy that worked in the past may not always work again in the future.

Attend their seminars or read their books, many of them are very impressive and persuasive.  Apparently, each of these contradictory formulas is the key to success.  And some people believe it!  Err, I was one of them.  Now I know better.