I think you are right on that. And I would like to add one more...

I think you are right on that. And I would like to add one more thing -- brokerage.

Brokerage is like the edge the casino has on you when you go to play an 'unfair' game.

Let me do a thought analysis here, starting with $100k capital, and we go to trade that.

Let's assume that we trade twice a day since we are day traders of our entire 100k portfolio. The brokerage fee on that would be 0.12% x 2 = 0.24%. Now you continue doing this, because reading charts and trading is your strategy, and you continue for a whole year doing this. So 0.24% x 365 = 87.6%.

This means that if wanted to make say just break even for the year, you have achieve 87.6% annual return on your 100k. Otherwise you will have less than 100k by the end of the year. Whereas if I only traded my portfolio as whole 8 times in a whole year, then my cost would be around 1%. I have a huge advantage over busy traders. I can pretty much walk and still get a better result than the guys who are sprinting and have to cover 87.6% before not losing money.

The question I've always wondered is why trading is so popular then? I think it's because casual investors who do not do the numbers or study history are easily convinced by the idea of trading. Trading and studying patterns just seems so easy to the novice. Most brokerage wants you to trade as often as possible, since that's how they make money. So they will send you free reports and stuff with patterns in charts that signals sell now or buy now, hoping that you will trade after reading them. Ask yourself, where do you find those trading and free chart reports most often? Your broker.