Even in finance, a field in which research findings can be translated directly into business plans, trial and error turns out to be key. A. W. Jones started out expecting that chart following would allow him to call the broad market; this turned out to be a blind alley, but he succeeded by improvising a new system of incentives for stock pickers. Steinhardt, Fine, and Berkowitz started out as equity analysts. But their success owed much to block trading plus an eccentric focus on monetary policy.
