after reading the backlog in this thread....

one thing which seems to be blatantly absent with many traders quite vocal in this thread is common sense.

If you want to achieve something, you need to be willing to use the appropriate means: If you want to trade quick swings over several $100 in a matter of seconds, you need a guaranteed reliable market access, and you need a trading link which responds in terms of milliseconds. If you attempt the same with just some website service, you're lacking common sense. Or to put it the other way round, you aren't acting rational, you're gambling. If you gamble, you loose on average. If you do it for the adrenaline, then please go for it, but don't whine afterwards.

You can apply rational strategies even with an unreliable slow market link. Just use more long term strategies then. For example, if you'd traded some kind of market-follow strategy, maybe even some dead simple "average crossover", then you'd be switched over to shorting days ago when we went below $800 and you'd be taking home money now. Or at least you'd be stepped out and watch the drama from the sidelines.

The trick is to find a pattern of behaviour which you are really capable of keeping up long time, and which is profitable on average.