Real Tick is also a harrowingly complicated piece of software that sports the most unforgiving learning curve this side of air-traffic control. I spent almost a week poring over the manuals before working up the nerve to toy with it during market hours. Real Tick has plenty of features to be abused and misunderstood: real-time charting and technical analysis; custom-order routing; dynamic watch-list sorting; time and sales tickers; infinitely customizable alerts and shortcuts and pre- and post-market trading. Its most beloved window, though, is the MarketMakers Display, also known as a Level II screen for NASDAQ stocks. NASDAQ is preferred by day traders because it's entirely electronic--with no humans acting as a bottleneck--and in most cases it offers instantaneous executions. The Level II screen lines up all the bids and asks for a given stock--the prices and quantities at which institutions and individuals have placed offers to purchase or sell shares. See an ask that you like? Click on it, tap a few keys, and you've added the shares to your account. Make it in and out alive a few dozen times, and you start feeling as if you've got a clue.

Get too much of a clue, though, and you might find yourself punished for being too smart. In the surreal unfolding of each day's trading, being too clever by half is a fine way to halve your bank account. That's where a sophisticated appreciation of your peers' ability to covet folly can help you cash in. Conquering complicated software is a matter of practice, but cracking the code to mob dynamics? This is the eternal challenge for mystics, philosophers and capitalists.

A perfect example is the company formerly known as Computer Literacy (CMPL), an online seller of technical books, which went public last November. Taking its cue, perhaps, from Egghead software, the company announced it would be renaming its online bookstore--and stock ticker--Fatbrain.com (FATB). The day after the ticker changed, an analyst from Needham & Co reiterated his "strong buy" on the stock, saying Fatbrain "has the kind of 'attitude' that has been a proven winner on the Internet." My first inclination, when learning of this seemingly Dilbert-inspired ploy, was to give the analyst a fat lip. But my actual choices were more limited. Ignore it? Ridicule it in some day-trading chat room? Not a chance. I knew such an insipid scheme would be rewarded by the day-trading community. In lockstep with my reckless, feckless peers, I chose to fatten both my brain and wallet, cautiously buying a few hundred shares of CMPL in the mid-20s--and selling when it reached the low 30s. My only regret was not getting in sooner and getting out later.