i'll add one final thing on this. retail investors, given that I've talked to a few people who are retail talking about their trades--you cannot understand how resourced the "smart" money big investors are compared to you

"just" 2 decades ago, some of the firms I worked at, we wore looking at satellite photos of oil shipping ships that were being purposely concealed to determine what we though the real oil prices were

we also looked at satellite photos of how many cars were at big mass market retail chains like walmart to estimate the demand for that quarter

people would be sent surreptitiously to malls to look at how many people were there on christmas to give a sense of what was happening

and, even, that was still a hard game. retail, to be perfectly blunt, has no chance against these big platforms. that's why pay for oder flow exists, market makers want to take advantage of the average investor who somehow thinks they know what they're doing

does that mean they won't make money? of course not. it's a game of statistics. there are plenty of morons in casinos that play poorly but still make money. but on average, they will lose if they do not have the long term edge that large firms and hedge funds do