You can actually be worse than random chance and still make mountains of money.
The fact is, for most jobs like this, it is far more important to look & speak the part -- to be able to make other people think you really know what you're talking about -- than it is actually to be accurate. Most popular weather-people are attractive and telegenic. Very few ever are actually measured by accuracy of predictions. Similarly, equity analysts who can impress the client base (who are, mostly, non-financial professionals) rarely get called out for lack of accuracy. Not saying it never happens, but most of the time the analyst (with the help of their employer) takes all the credit (for hard work, knowledge, insight, etc) when they are right, and blame "unexpected circumstances" or "unforeseen events" when wrong.
You can't be worse than random. If your estimates on a binary question are consistently wrong, all you need to do is to do the inverse of what your estimates tell you, and now you're better than random.
Sure, if you are selling the strategy and not executing on it then its performance is actually irrelevant, all that matters is your ability to convince others of its value.
The whole point of equity analysts is to impress clients (which is why they are made public), not for the banks themselves to take positions based on the research. Hedge funds who actually trade, don't release research or buy/hold/sell recommendations.
The fact is, for most jobs like this, it is far more important to look & speak the part -- to be able to make other people think you really know what you're talking about -- than it is actually to be accurate. Most popular weather-people are attractive and telegenic. Very few ever are actually measured by accuracy of predictions. Similarly, equity analysts who can impress the client base (who are, mostly, non-financial professionals) rarely get called out for lack of accuracy. Not saying it never happens, but most of the time the analyst (with the help of their employer) takes all the credit (for hard work, knowledge, insight, etc) when they are right, and blame "unexpected circumstances" or "unforeseen events" when wrong.