This quiq seems to support the original posters thesis, though, no? No one's going to make a living wandering the streets in search of $20 bills.

I think you might be extending this model beyond its boundaries of usefulness.

Well it's a theoretical economics concept. The $20 bill is an opportunity, nothing more. A pretty good deal of course, but if you are pedantic you could defend the standpoint that you did have to do something to get it: first, get lucky enough to be there, notice it, then bend over and maybe clean it. So it's not "free", just a pretty good deal.

The same thing applies to getting a job for instance. Take job X. If job X was available and worth doing at wage $, someone would be doing it. So why bother applying ?

So what it really means is that the semi-strong and strong form of the efficient market hypothesis is bullshit: there are plenty of opportunities in the market, you're just not seeing most of them.

I would argue that nearly everyone doesn't even try to see opportunities.

This is why models are just for starting a conversation and not for predicting the future. Life has too many variables.

Wall Street isn't paying all those quants to start conversations.

Try writing out a business plan and see how well everything comes true step by step.

My point is that models will never accurately predict the future.

My favorite response to this:

"OK, how many times have you seen a $20 bill on the sidewalk???"

My answer would be "heaps of times". Different currency (GBP not USD) but still I saw £20s and £10s a lot

I can't say the same, but fair enough :)

(I actually heard this response with a $100 bill as the example, which would make it even less common).