I have written a lot on this subject. Two important points, in regard to expected value. A poker player cannot show that they have an expected value because the winrates are opaque in regard to tracking sites. An investor also cannot show this, and so there is no scientific bases to show that poker or investing is +ev. I have a disjoint blog that goes into an inquiry on the subject here: https://thewealthofchips.wordpress.com/
check out some of my articles on steem because they are related to yours and will be going forward.
The basic idea is that after realizing poker cannot be shown to be +ev with scientific basis (ie empirical data), there is the realization that you COULD set up the industry so this is possible. The solution for doing so is a generalization and then specification of John Nash's Ideal Money which is a proposal for a standard unit of value measurement which would allow investing to have the same quality.
Well EV = PROFIT / NR. TRADES OR BETS
If 1 BTC trade has 0.1 EV for example that means that over 10 trades I should expect a 1 BTC profit, on average.
I know little of poker, but yes we could talk about EV in investments, that is more exciting. I'll check out your blog.
In my opinion it relates to the efficient market hypothesis. Inefficient markets always have +EV, and as more and more traders compete to gain money, the profit potential shrinks due to competitive pressure, and the EV becomes 0 / trader, and the market becomes efficient.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis
This is why trading FOREX markets are pretty much gambling, when you compete against high frequency trading bots, you have no chance to efficiently predict the market.
What I mean to say is that there is no basis to say, I'm going invest in X and my expected return is Y. You would need a god to be able to truly predict what ones winrate will should be. Poker players, over time, suggest that they make x dollars over some period, but past results don't necessarily predict the future in this way ;p Always you can ask them what a proper sample size would be (ie law of large numbers), to have statistical confidence. Nearly no poker player understands this questions, and there is no reasonable set of empirical results for a player to have strong confidence (I myself have over 100k games and its not enough).
it's true if the markets were efficient then the EV would be effectively gone, but I more mean to say, if one cannot show a play or strategy is profitable then it can't be considered +ev. There is only guessing going on by both winners and losers.
My articles are prob too disjoint unless you really search, but many players and knowledgeable people seem to find SOME value in them :)
Yes that is true, because there is not strategy that is profitable. There is no set of fixed rules that will result in fixed profits. The market is flexible, and somewhat unpredictable. The only way to gain profit from a market is to analyze macroeconomic events that will affect it.
The EV will be uncertain, but the risk is easier to calculate than the reward, so there is material we can work with. In quantitative finance, there are many topics about this.
Also in betting it's pretty easy to estimate the winrate, that is what the sportsbetting bookies are doing, and they are good at it, otherwise they would be bankrupt.