That's a matter of opinion, wrong mindset. I bought gold miners that ballooned, and swing traded pharma. This turned into money that I can use to buy things like computers and furniture. Or buy even more of the fabled broad index funds.
Vanguard and Schwab, with an increase move of capital to Schwab. They allow more advanced trading like options (no, I'm not that crazy - yet), shorting, buying and selling in the same day, etc, that Vanguard doesn't even support. Also, there's a downloadable web client that lets you create complex If Then type conditions, as well as aggregate news and customize dashboards and a bunch of other stuff.
I'm not that active trading, maybe I perform an action once every one to two weeks. I spend almost all my time just trying to absorb information.
Honestly, with all my questioning of index funds and contrarianism in comments above, I am slightly skeptical that the average person should have this much access to these types of tools. I could instantly blow away all my money and be left in debt (given they allow margin).
