In 2004 I enjoyed my 15 minutes of fame for an article I wrote called The Tao of Alpha, in which I explained the concept of alpha as a zero-sum game. Sources of alpha in 2004 were much different than those available in the mid-1990s when I started my career and they are also different from today’s. Alpha is highly transient and has been coming and going for as long as capital markets have existed. The term “alpha” entered the vocabulary of Wall Street sometime in the 1980s, gaining widespread use in the 1990s with the proliferation of hedge funds.It...