Anyone have hard numbers on if/by how much quants outperform old fashioned techniques like flags and finding stocks that tend to go the opposite direction from

Anyone have hard numbers on if/by how much quants outperform old fashioned techniques like flags and finding stocks that tend to go the opposite direction from the one you're interested in? I don't know the terminology for all this but I know there are limits due to uncertainty so even the best algorithms may not do much better that someone guessing. Do quants do 10% better, 2x better, 10x better? My Dad and I had a relatively lucky streak where we doubled our money day trading Apple on margin after the September 29, 2000 dot bomb: http://money.cnn.com/2000/09/29/markets/techwrap/ http://money.cnn.com/2000/09/29/markets/techwrap/ He saved quite a bit of money by being able to trade 1000 shares each time. Since the stock swung +/- 2% a couple of days a week it was pretty easy to make 2% most days, 5% on a good day. It was like a casino where the odds were 2% in your favor, with a ratchet that just sold when it was about to go down. Then you just guess the shape of the day’s heartbeat. He wouldn't even let me sell short because he felt it was unethical, so we only gained half what we could have which was agonizing to endure. I pleaded for him to get out because he was up a couple years of my wage at the time and my gut was screaming at me that something wasn't right. Then we lost all the gains the day 9/11 happened. We sold a few weeks later and ended up breaking even. Then Apple went to 500 over the next couple years with splits thrown in to boot. I wanted to try day trading myself but they changed the law in 2001 so you had to have $25,000 to trade on margin, so only the wealthy could get twice the gains: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_day_trader https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_day_trader I personally don’t buy any of the standard advice about risk because it’s more risky to keep your money in a bank and only get a couple percent a year. I felt so miserable about the whole experience that I worked a bunch of dead end jobs and ran up my credit cards over the next several years. It’s heartbreaking to know how hard typical folks in the world work to make $100 a day when day trading $50,000 can easily earn $1000. But those folks don’t have $50,000 so are locked out. I guess in my heart it felt like stealing, or at the very least finding yourself in the universe where you won and thinking you somehow earned your survivor bias. So I don’t do it anymore, and I’m even hesitant to invest because politics are so volatile right now. Sorry to digress, I should have stopped at the first paragraph.