I’ve been asking for clarification of what “success” means in this context. What gets dismissed as failure or incompetence I’ve come to see as misdirection.
I can tell you (having lived through 3 boom and bust cycles since the mid '90s) that a significant number of people in the financial markets knew there was a tech bubble (circa 1998–2002) and a housing bubble (circa 2005-2008), despite media, Federal Reserve and government declarations to the contrary at the time.
If you looked at the options series on a number of financial stocks (circa 2006-2007), you saw a price implied probability density that was factoring in the possibility of large negative price moves than anyone in positions of authority accepted as possible. This was specifically apparent in the regional banks and subprime lenders.
If you then looked at the financial statements, you saw earnings being propped up by a reduction in loss reserves on a geographically concentrated real estate portfolio, often of questionable credit quality.
Had you pointed this out to “professionals”, you got dismissive, defensive rebuttals. Yet, all of those corps went bankrupt.
Does that count as “success”?
Further Reading
Mizrach, Bruce (2010). “Estimating implied probabilities from option prices and the underlying.” Handbook of quantitative finance and risk management. Springer, Boston, MA, 515-529. (PDF)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1059056016300685