If you are doing day trades you are loosing money. As simple as that.
The only possibility for a small guy is to invest and hold. Otherwise you are making the exchange rich.
Do you realize how much a big guy pays for a transaction? I can tell you: 1/2 penny a share if that. Yet, if you look at the performance of the economy (take S&P 500) and compare it w/ performance of an average mutual fund you will see a remarkable correlation. So how comes the pros don't do all that well? Simple, all it boils down to is statistics. What's more remarkable is that if you take two investors, one consistently buying at the local "wrong" moment, and the other consistently buying at the local "right" moment they will bot get to the same point within 10-15 years and that's all that matters to most of us.
So if you take a reasonably diversified portfolio, run your own simple calculations and monitor your risk/return you are not worse than any of the big guys. All you need to do is adjust to slow processes. If the market crashes you are toast anyway.
take a gander:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0...9346484-9507334 I personally haven't got a chance to read it, but it came highly recommended
