It's a cargo cult, in the sense that the apes are aware that stock market investors are able to make large amounts of money by coming up with clever theories an

It's a cargo cult, in the sense that the apes are aware that stock market investors are able to make large amounts of money by coming up with clever theories and using smart derivative plays to make ridiculous profits... and so they follow those patterns, creating elaborate theories, buying stocks, but they miss the critical underlying component of the professional trader's version: those theories and trades are based in an actual understanding of how the market and businesses work. Lacking that understanding, ape theories are untethered and random, their trades are insanely naive, and the ridiculous profits will therefore never arrive. It must be because the theories weren't outlandish enough, right?