Nassim Taleb explains this very well in one of his books (not sure which, Fooled by Randomness or Black Swan). Assume you have 8 traders and their chance of ma

Nassim Taleb explains this very well in one of his books (not sure which, Fooled by Randomness or Black Swan). Assume you have 8 traders and their chance of making a win/loss in a given year is 50% (i.e completely random). On average, after 1 year, you'll have 4 traders who made money. After 2 years, you'll have 2 and after 3 years you'll have 1. That one trader can now proclaim loudly that he's outperformed the marked for 3 years in a row. Even though his own influence in this was zero, and he reached it through pure luck. Luck plays a large role in everyone's life, but for traders much more so, and comparatively for programmers much less.