Aeon recently published a piece on luck, which - as it turns out - is a real and measurable thing. http://aeon.co/magazine/psychology/does-lacky-luck-exist-or-

Aeon recently published a piece on luck, which - as it turns out - is a real and measurable thing. http://aeon.co/magazine/psychology/does-lacky-luck-exist-or-do-you-make-your-own/ http://aeon.co/magazine/psychology/does-lacky-luck-exist-or-... As the investigation notes, luck - good or bad - stems from the kinds of decisions people make. If you're doing well, you're more likely to place bets with lower risk, which are more likely to pay off. This is how success breeds success; good fortune optimizes for more of the same. Conversely, if you're doing badly and feeling desperate, you're more likely to take the riskier bet, which is naturally the one more likely to fail. In this way bad luck usually leads to worse - except in the rare cases when it doesn't. If you're (a) in a position to cast a very wide net by (b) placing lots of relatively small bets in (c) a field that produces rare but ginormous winners, then you can turn the loser's dynamic into a gold mine (maybe!), but that's three hard things you have to get right, and coming up short on any one front will reduce you to the exact same roadkill that your model churns out daily.