Many brokerages now advertise to individual investors to get them started in trading stocks online. These include not just places like TD Ameritrade, E-Trade, and Robinhood, but also major mutual funds such as Fidelity Investments. Due to competition, online trading now has zero trading fees, and the ease of trading online is incredible. Several online stock brokerages are criticized because they make stock trading feel like a video game and give customers access to large credit lines to trade with.
With these options, can we as individual investors do better than the actively managed mutual funds by picking our own stocks? The answer is a resounding no! Mark Hulbert in his Wall Street Journal article, “When Day Traders Do Well, It’s Probably Just Luck,” says:
There’s little doubt that day trading has mushroomed in popularity in recent months, or that some day traders have produced extraordinary profits. According to statisticians, however, there’s also little doubt that most of these day traders’ good performance is due to luck. They essentially would have just as good a chance of success going to the casino (2020).