Outcome is simply the final score: Who won the game; what numbers came up in a roll of the dice; how high did a stock go. Outcome is the result, regardless of the method used to achieve it. It is not controllable.

You can blow on the dice all you want, but whether they come up 'seven' is still a function of random luck.

The data strongly suggest that very good years in the U.S. stock market are followed by more good years.

We just had to roll the dice and keep Terrell in there.

Most of the time, economic data is fairly benign. I don't wish to imply it is meaningless, but it is not a driver of stock markets. Indeed, the correlation between economic noise and how equity markets perform has been wildly overemphasized.

What you pay for an investment is the single biggest determinant for how successful that investment will be. When equity prices are high, your returns will be lower. When they are cheap, your returns will be higher.