[URSpider94]

That's not a fair assessment. Let's say you are doing well and actually investing $1000 per month into the market. Now let's say you are diversifying into three index ETF's, and you buy those quarterly, so that's three trades a quarter on a total of $3,000. If the commission is $35/trade, you are being taxed 3.5% of your investment up-front to get into the market. If the commission is $4/trade (a more typical fee these days), then the up-front loss is 0.4%. You'll pay those same fees again on the way out, and assuming that you sell on the same schedule, that's now 7% vs. 0.8%.

Yes, there's some nice compounding in between, assuming that you buy and hold with no further trades. But, there's a wide gulf between "day trading" and active stock-picking. Assuming that your average hold time is 5 years per stock, you're still going to rack up a lot of commission costs at $35 per trade.