But then again - there aren't any tests to pass before one can trade - so trade away.
But remember - you both look like dancing pigeons to professional traders (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Skinner_box).
It's not hard to make money in the market. It's not hard to see real, after-tax, inflation adjusted gains. Carefully picking companies in a buy-and-hold strategy is a reliable place to park your money for 3-8% growth.
These guys aren't pretending to be day-traders. Looking at fund performance, as I'm sure you know, very very few managed funds beat the market with any consistency. There's too much hand-wavy "the big banks and funds play the little guy as a pawn" paranoia. Yes, you can make yourself a pawn by trying to play Gordon Gecko with your E-Trade account. But cost-averaging into a stock that you chose and believe in is both effective and open to everybody.
And who knows. There are well told stories of amateur investors making literally billions of dollars finding holes in option contracts that the hedge funds and IBanks missed.
They started with $100k pooled together from 3 guys' life savings. How much did they make?
Exactly.
The wikipedia article, short as it is, covers through 2010 when that $100k grew to "100 to 300 Million." Read the latest write-up of them in FT. It's a billion dollar venture now.
Professional traders like this cat?
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/01/14/169326326/housecat...