My friend has been trading a small number of stocks which have been outperforming the market. Basically, he looks for highly rated, high volume, and volatile stocks which are trending upward. Once commissions and taxes are subtracted from his results, I'm not sure how much more money he will have made compared to if he had bought-and-held these stocks. Though I think his approach may be less risky than buy-and-hold, I'm not sure it's worth the effort. I'm also not sure he didn't exaggerate his batting average a bit.