A shuffled deck of cards needs exactly 7 shuffles to become truly random. Not 5. Not 6. Not "a few times." Seven. Persi Diaconis proved it in 1992 and Wall Street has been ignoring the implication ever since.
Below 7 shuffles, the previous order shows through. If you know the starting arrangement, you can predict where cards end up with accuracy that grows the fewer shuffles occur. The deck has memory. The math is exact. Diaconis and Dave Bayer wrote the paper. Seven riffles. Not close to seven. Exactly seven.
The market has memory too. Every position, every liquidation, every earnings expectation, every forced flow leaves a trace on the chart. Your eye sees pure noise. Diaconis's math sees a deck that has not been shuffled enough. The past is right there. You just do not have the tools to count it.
Your gut looks at a chart and calls it random. The math looks at the same chart and counts the shuffles. Only one of them can tell you what the next card is likely to be.
Diaconis has spent 40 years explaining this. Before he was a mathematician he was a professional magician, so he knew what a rigged deck looked like from both sides. The 1992 paper is free. The Stanford lecture on YouTube is free. The number seven has been in every stats textbook for 30 years.
The lesson: what looks random is usually a deck someone did not shuffle enough. The market is that deck.
Jay goes into “Girls, Girls, Girls”. Then switches up & raps his verse from “‘03 Bonnie and Clyde”. As soon as he says “Only time we don’t speak is during ‘Sex In The City’, the beat changes AGAIN into DC3’s “Girl” - as their music video was inspired by the show. 😭😭 I love it.
Jay Z closed the day 2 show with Encore.
"And I need you to remember one thing
I came, I saw, I conquered
From record sales, to sold out concerts
So motherfucker if you want this encore
I need you to scream, 'till your lungs get sore"
The GOAT.
A Teenage Novak Djokovic after RG QFs :
“Rafa Nadal is beatable here. He’s not unbeatable. He’s the best here but he’s beatable”
Rafa laughed, People laughed but Djokovic defeated Nadal 3 times at RG…only player to defeat Nadal & win RG.