In previous discussions of optimal investing, the efficient market hypothesis has been repeatedly cited to say that you cannot easily predict the market, and that even if you could, you would be better off working for a bank, rather than risking your own money.
But suppose I had discovered an entirely novel technique for predicting the market, one sufficiently complex that the EMH does not apply. How would I get a job at a bank to leverage this?
I could show them my technique, but then (in the unlikely event they took me seriously) they could copy it. I could get them to sign a non-disclosure agreement, but what mechanism is there to enforce such an agreement, when the technique could be used behind closed doors?
I could track my predictions, registered with some impartial third party, but then if thousands of people did this (which they do) or one person did this with thousands of sockpuppets, then some of these people would show extremely good results by sheer luck.
One reason this may be important is that 'superhuman finance AI' is strictly simpler than 'superhuman AGI' and it's important to work out how easy it is for AI to acquire massive resources by dominating the world's financial markets.
META: I considered posting this to the comments on the last optimal investing post, but since its several months old I assumed few would read it.
Well, you could invest your own money. Most strategies benefit from using small amount of cash, since being able to take advantage of small volume opportunities often trumps higher relative execution costs. Register your track record and start recruiting investors.
You can also trade with your own strategies at companies that let you use a mis of your money and theirs, and provide some resources. Typically, traders at these companies aren't executing pure softwares strategies, so "stealing" their methods doesn't have much point.
You could also go t...
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