Barber and Odean (2000)[TM1] , (“Trading Is Hazardous to Your Wealth: The Common Stock Investment Performance of Individual Investors“) analysed the returns earned by 66,465 households trading common stocks over a 6-year period before 1991 and 1997 at the same large discount brokerage firm. The main finding of this study was that investors did under-perform the markets. This under-performance could be mainly explained by transaction costs.
It doesn't have to be that way and individual investors can perform in line with the markets or even over-perform them by using our services.
It is also interesting to note that transaction costs in Vietnam are not higher than the ones in the developed western markets.