[dsacco]

> This goes double for long-term success. As the disclaimers say, past performance is no indication of future results.

Past performance is no guarantee of future performance, but it should absolutely be an indicator. Unless you view success in trading as a purely stochastic process, consistently beating the market is a strong signal that it can be done again in the future (by definition). If you do believe success in trading is a purely stochastic process, the disclaimer becomes moot in the “indicator” form or “guarantee” form because such a position is antithetical to trading in the first place.

To be more precise, if we're going to engage in deliberate trading at all, it's only productive to do so if we operate under the assumption that performance is random.