In fact, chaos theory does not seem to be a good model for markets. According to The Predictors , Farmer, Packard and colleagues worked for about three years before creating models that yielded consistent profits. Models, even models with predictive value in markets, are not enough to create the cash machine that the founders of The Prediction Company dreamed of. The Prediction Company was founded by physicists, who are notorious for writing poor software. This is understandable, since software engineering is a huge field of study itself.
Few people are able to master math, physics, quantitative finance and software engineering.
There is a huge amount of nuts and bolts work that goes into creating a trading system that can turn a promising trading model into a trading system that can make money. Farmer and Packard were wise enough to realize that they needed to hire professional software engineers and today about half of the technical staff at Prediction are software engineers. Someone once described The Predictors as the story of the loss of innocence of Doyne Farmer and Norman Packard. From reading the book and interviewing at The Prediction Company, the egalitarian ideals of the company still seem to be there, although they have been modified by the realities of running a small business. The book never directly describes the changes Farmer and Packard went through.