> So you are basically saying trading is a bad idea. For most people, yes. Active management of your own stocks in an IRA is almost always a losing proposition

> So you are basically saying trading is a bad idea. For most people, yes. Active management of your own stocks in an IRA is almost always a losing proposition. That is, most people who do it will end up worse than if they just parked the money in a boring ETF. > Doesn't that mean that all these Discount- and Non-Discount Brokerages are basically just selling us bad ideas? YES. Especially the ones that advertise technical analysis tools during network prime-time. Those that are knowledgeable in that kind of trading aren't using some E*Trade web-based chart widget. They have a Bloomberg terminal or similar. > Yet it seems many people make their living by doing trading? Are they all just gamblers who will lose in the end? Some will. Those that make a consistent living at it spend a large chunk of their day exclusively focused on that task. They're unlikely to be doing it inside their IRA, and they're certainly going to be more sophisticated than the layperson planning for their retirement. This is kind of a tautology. The market is a zero-sum game, except replace "zero" with the performance of the overall market. For every trader that beats the market, there is another trader that under-performs by the same amount. The traders that are beating the market are more likely to be the hedge fund managers or other sophisticated investors. That leaves the average Joes and other retail investors on the other side of the line. > Are brokerages like ETrade etc. basically selling and advertising something like cigarettes, bad for your (financial) health? No, I think that's a little too far. Cigarettes are an almost unmitigated bad. Tools that help investors participate in the market with low friction are amoral. But to the extent that their advertising glorifies the pretty charts, I think it's pretty bad.