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This finance page has more on heights as an example of a normal distribution.
See this page for the non-normal ("fat tail" or platykurtic) nature of the market.
On incubator funds, see this speech by John Bogle,
and this IFA article (it has a picture that will give you nightmares).
For even worse incubator fund nightmares, see this SEC account
and related speech
about one extreme case.
(Note that it takes an extreme case before the SEC will take action: the "luck as skill" marketing trick isn't illegal.)
This paper by Geoffrey Friesen and Travis Sapp actually measures how badly investors lag the market by attempting to time it: 1.56% annually, on average.
The inevitable conclusion: "our results commend the relative appeal of a simple 'buy and hold' strategy to the average investor."
This 1977 article by Warren Buffett explains why inflation is harmful to stock returns.
A 1979 Business Week article titled
The Death of Equities
describes the strange strategies investors were using to try to beat stagflation.
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