I can personally attest to profitability in trading, as I spend 5 years trading for a proprietary hedge fund.The vast majority of traders lose money, which is why a small minority of traders can make money. Markets adapt to trading systems as they are more widely adopted and have a self-destroying-prophesy effect. Markets are also not random, they are probabilistic. Human beings have a tendency towards bullishness in all facets of life about 62% of the time, positive versus negative. This occurs at all degrees of trend, from centuries down to minutes, and each plays out to effect the next degree up. If you can get an idea of where you are in these patterns you can make money.Many traders throw in the towel and jump on the "random" bandwagon after they have decimated one or two principal bankrolls. These are the people who trade in the same manner as the vast majority of market participants.Randomness doesn't explain a guy like, say, Dick Diamond. I have met him. He has traded profitably since before I was born. I have watched him trade in real time, make money in real time, explain to me why his trading system works where so many others absolutely fail. Because he is playing with probabilities, using secondary indicators that only add to the "odds". Trading is a lot like playing poker, and there is a reason that mostly the same group of people is sitting at the final rounds in the world poker tour every year. It is a skill.