Short answer: it depends. You need to have two things, experience and money.
The first one cannot be bought, it must be developed in the years.
I have 15 years of trading behind me, almost all of which have been experiments (and losses on a demo accounts). Then a few years ago the turning point. From a mathematical intuition, I have refined a technique that works well on very liquid markets with low commissions (eurusd, among other things one of the most difficult markets, on the Forex) where with a real intraday and multiday system I make good money. Other methods that I use are bank ETFs with accumulation plans. But this is more of a long-range investment than actual trading. While the trading strategy is my invention.
So better today or yesterday? For the markets, certainly yesterday, when it was possible to exploit market inefficiencies (triangulations, arbitrage with covered & warrants, etc.). While as regards the trading tools, certainly better today.
With a good professional broker (for example I use Dukascopy which is Swiss broker) it is possible to build robots capable of doing a good 50% of the work. It wasn't possible before. Be wary of all those brokers with headquarters on the islands, they are marketmaker (when you lose they earn) they are 90% of the brokers and they know that you will lose everything sooner or later!
If you want to learn more, go to the home page of this website. Enjoy.
