Well, he might just not be smart enough. Large financial institutions and many smaller hedge funds reap countless millions from the markets and much of this co

Well, he might just not be smart enough. Large financial institutions and many smaller hedge funds reap countless millions from the markets and much of this comes from proprietary trading (well, all of it in the case of hedge funds.) There's a massive brain-drain into financial institutions of many of our best and brightest, all in search of making a fortune by the time they're 30. So on the one hand you have top students from top institutions applying their considerable intellect and training into applying advanced mathematical methods against an extremely complex problem. On the other you have a guy who tinkers around himself hoping after hope that the amateur (for that is by definition what he is) attempts that he makes at beating the market are going to some day work out and make him his fortune. Unfortunately the odds are stacked against you, and those are compounded by fact that you have little or no opportunity to employ any serious leverage. "I would have probably, or at least possibly, been wealthy by other means by now". At _best_ "possibly", I think. At 25 that is an incredibly arrogant statement to make.