Came in to post this point as well. Even if you don't consider it gambling, you judge a stock brokers talent based on their average return of investment for th

Came in to post this point as well. Even if you don't consider it gambling, you judge a stock brokers talent based on their average return of investment for their portfolios. Unless that average is increasing every year, its hard to say they are improving their talent. Not many brokers and traders work on improving their ROI, they focus on compounding the capital they have at targets like 1% to 3%. The law of diminishing returns also plays a big role in a stock brokers career, there are swing traders who may make only a few transactions a year, then there are day traders who make hundreds of trades a day. There isn't a strong correlation of hours trading to profits. Comparing this at all to programming is like comparing apples to kittens.