[Henry17]

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There are lots of trading systems being sold, many of which probably beat the market, or they wouldn't have so many customers.

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The Secret sold so many copies that it was the second most influential item to bookstore annual sales. Based on your logic then you must believe that anyone can change reality just by thinking about it?

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Just because you sell the program doesn't mean you still can't make the trades yourself.

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It would certainly make it harder. If you take identical software and give it identical inputs you'd get identical output. So depending on how successful your sales were you'd have a bunch of people trying to buy the same stock. Now if your program actually worked then the amount of money that would move following it's picks would be sufficient to influence the market.

The only way you could continue to use the program would be if the commercial version had a time delay allowing your original version to give you picks before the stampede.

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Why not?

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The same reason I don't believe in handicapping services for sports betting. I have been very successful betting on sports. After over a decade doing it I could be selling my picks but why would I? The extra income generated from selling picks is insignificant relative to the primary income of actually wagering.

If I had a program that could beat the market with no human interaction I could easily come up with enough money that the income being generated from trading would make selling the software insignificant.