[eru]

The average professional trader might not be that smart, who knows. But:

(A) I am not confident I am smarter than the average professional trader here.

(B) You don't need to win against the average professional trader: you need to win against the smartest ones. And: I'm not so sure I am smarter than the average professional trader anyway.

About your theses: my null hypothesis is that these things are already priced in.

[dgellow]

You actually don't need to win against the smartest ones, it's not really who is on the other side of the trade. There is an interesting dynamic where the space where retail investors operate isn't really the same space as the "smart money", and because of that there are a lot of small-ish arbitrage opportunities that you can advantage based on your industry expertise (I don't mean insider trading, I mean your understanding regarding how your industry is evolving). Relying on an ETF is perfectly fine, it's way less stressful and gives you the safe-ish exposure to the market most people want. But if you want to do active trading by picking stocks (and you don't mind risking losing your money), you really don't need anything too sophisticated.

That being said I would really not recommend people who don't have money and time to lose to actively invest. It's a fun hobby and can be pretty profitable, but not for everyone

[eru]

> That being said I would really not recommend people who don't have money and time to lose to actively invest. It's a fun hobby and can be pretty profitable, but not for everyone

Do you have any idea on the risk adjusted returns of your hobby? As far as I can tell, it's counterproductive for most people. (And if it ain't, you should probably go earn the big bucks at a hedge fund instead of whatever you are currently doing.)

And _iff_ you want more risk, you can add leverage to your portfolio instead of concentrating on individual stocks.

I say 'risk adjusted returns', because if the general market went up, it's relatively easy for some folks to be up more if they got lucky and concentrated on the winners (but equally easy to get unlucky and get below market returns).

Btw, I live in a jurisdiction without capital gains tax, so in theory active trading would be especially lucrative for me; I just doubt I can beat the market.