I disagree on us average joes not standing a chance. It's pretty easy to ride the wave of popular stocks or commodities simply by following the macro trends in the news and staying informed on global developments.

It's more risky than index funds, but being able to ride a bit of the Nvidia hype and then de-risking those proceeds into an index fund is nice.

You'll probably never win with day-trading or HFT though.

(not financial advice!)