Originally Posted by AmateurFlix

a friend of mine got into it and claimed to have some early success; I did plenty of research and gave it a very serious, dedicated effort for about 9 months, but I couldn't get ahead in the long term. my friend, who wound up getting so involved with it he later began coaching others, eventually quit day trading due to "the fees eating up my profits." So evidently it wasn't profitable for him either.

I think the notion of any long term (year to year) profitability from day trading on a home pc over dial-up is just a pipe dream used to sell day trading courses. You're competing against firms with fast computers and algorithms written in C, with the hardware located as close to the trading floor as possible to minimize response times. Running TradeStation on a home pc via DSL/cable just isn't competitive.