Urban Legend: Day Trading at the Public Library...

I had an interesting talk with a fellow on Saturday. He was an engineer by trade and we mostly talked about riding our bikes however the discussion began when he asked me about the current state of Bally Total Fitness, the health club we both belong to.
I began following BTF* closely about a year ago by setting a google news alert on it so I’m pretty up-to-date on most of the corporate machinations which have been going on about the preplanned bankruptcy and its opposition. I mentioned that the stock was worth about 54 cents a share and he thought that it might be a good investment, an idea which I discouraged pointing out that in a bankruptcy the stock gets canceled and the equity holders lose everything.
He then asked me if I’d heard about “these guys that were day trading using the computers at the public library”. He then pointed out that he’d heard that they each were making about $200 a day. I expressed my skepticism at this suggesting that all you need is one really bad day when the market is getting beat up to lose everything.Here are some of my other thoughts on the subject:
I’ve heard news journal reports that the vast majority of those who try to both formally and informally “day trade” lose their shirts.
I don’t day trade but I do engage in “trade timing” when I am selling and buying. ( I don’t have any real secrets here but I have discovered that I am able to buy stock cheaper than the visible current ticker prices, enough usually to cover the fees of both buying and selling). One thing I am doing at that moment is I have multiple browsers open. Have you ever used even the “modern broadband access computers” in a public library? To someone like me they are really about what you can’t do. You’re limited to one browser at a time and it is cumbersome and unfriendly. You have a default search engine (usually MSN because of its affiliation with “explorer”) which resists any attempt to "googlize" or "yahooize" it. Other than to do a check of my portfolio I’ve found the public library’s computers to be worthless for activities which require internet agility.
The other thing is the limit on time. At my public library you may only use the computers for 120 minutes a day.If you were making $ 200.00 a day why would you even be using the computers at the public library?
In short I believe that if anyone is successfully day trading at the Public Library they are doing it there for a very short time.

* not the stock symbol which is “BFTH”