Exactly, let's not extend the conclusions of the article: it's not that it's impossible to consistently beat the market average, it's just that it's extremely u

Exactly, let's not extend the conclusions of the article: it's not that it's impossible to consistently beat the market average, it's just that it's extremely unlikely for the "general public". EMT is probably approximately true, specially with fast algorithmic trading and automated analysis. But the degree of accuracy is key -- some applications are highly sensitive to how good this approximation is, allowing big gains. Also, in practice, there is a "zero sum" part of trading, and that necessarily implies that someone is going to make money and someone will loose (disregarding the other part). Whoever has the best model wins consistently.