Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background.

How much time would I have to spend trading to turn a profit?
It depends on how you define trading.  If you're looking at day-trading, where you're probably going to be in a highly-leveraged position for minutes or hours, the automated traders are probably going to kill you.  But, if you have a handful (less than a dozen) equities, and spend about an hour or so every week conducting research, you have a good chance of doing pretty well. You need to understand the market, listen to the earnings calls, and understand the factors that contribute to the bottom line of your investments.  You should not be trading for the sake of trading, you're trading to try to achieve the best returns. Beware of dogmatists and people selling products that align with their dogma. Warren Buffet invests in companies for an extremely long investment window. Mr. Buffet also expends significant resources to gain a deep understanding of the fundamentals of the businesses that he invests in and the factors affecting those fundamentals. Buffet does not buy an S&P 500 index fund and whistle dixie.