Seriously, here's your competition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Technologies How deluded do you have to be to think you have an edge over that?
People like you stay out.
More to the point, just because a genius mathematician and code breaker started a hedge fund it doesn't at all push out any of the little guys. The market is so large he can't possibly be trading all instruments at once, and "scaling" is a problem for huge hedge funds. Especially ones that have to answer to their shareholders. Even though this is a huge fund, it is highly inflexible.
What you're saying is akin to "Google already does email and they're loaded with geniuses, what makes you think you have an edge over that?"
Or it will get done by people who have thought long and hard about how they are going to compete with the giants, rather than someone naïve sap.
The fact that the question is being asked does not imply that there are no good answers to it, but it is unlikely that someone who hasn't spent time considering how to improve on the incumbents is going to beat them.
For example Taaffeite Capital Management (who gained some publicity for good returns on Brexit) are a < $10mm fund who use IB[1].
Sure, bigger funds have better market access, and it will always be impossible to implement a high frequency trading approach. But these platforms are about as good as a small player can get.
[1] http://www.afr.com/personal-finance/shares/artificial-intell...
I think this goes directly to the "if you use these platforms you are a fool" comment. It seems to me that some people who aren't fools use the platforms, and some who are, don't.
Also, this is HN. Pretty sure there is more than one MIT PhD reading this, and I know there is more than one doing original AI research. Bring this comment to mind: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/28911860225 (exact comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079)
"if you use these platforms you are a fool"
I said if you use these platforms _and don't have a reason to think you've got an advantage_ you shouldn't be doing so.
Lun and his peers are an exception to this. If you want to make a second argument and say he shouldn't be trading go ahead (and I'll try to back you up), but my original point was about the 99.9% who aren't Lun and are clearly just fish.
Incorrect for the reasons pointed out above, they're trading size, you're likely not, it's a completely different game for them in a completely different field due to their liquidity needs. They are not your competition.