Any stock traders in here ?

Nope, it's rigged. See:Barclays, Libor.

I've made and lost a lot of money on the markets.  I've done everything from option spreads, straight puts/calls, writing puts/calls, and swing trading different equities.

I've come to the realization that it's no different than going to vegas.  Even if everything lines up exactly right it still seems to work out so I lose money.  

That being said, I love the leverage you get with options but I hate the huge losses you take at the onset with the bid/ask spread.  I also hate the time decay aspect.  So I've been swing trading the ultra leveraged ETF's UPRO & SPXU to long and short the SP500.  I've had moderate success with these.  They're most certainly not buy and hold type stocks though.

Yep, there was a good friend of mine I worked with who took a $25k account and turned it into $0 in less than 5 days trading his "sure thing" options strategy.

7 or 8 years ago when I was really into options I took $5k and turned it into $40k in about three weeks buying near term options that were way out of them money.  I thought I was the king of the world.  Then I did one trade and the stock went against me and I couldn't get out even for a loss.  I turned that $40k into $0.  I really only lost $5k, but it felt like I lost the $40k.  Fortunately I wrote off the $5k before I even started.

This is pretty much my strategy as well. That and maintaining a fairly diversified portfolio.

This is not towards you personally as I know that not ALL institutional traders operate the same.  However, I do believe that there are some underhanded things that go on with large traders.  Something that I believe that trader's do is run up the price/volume of a stock only to sell after the sheep have jumped in.  I also believe a similar startegy is used to run down the price of a stock.  As far as advantages, for one many institutions use super computers to make there trades.  Often, buying and selling to realize only minimal gains.  However, the volume/size of the trades is much more significant than for the small trader.  Again, not YOU, but there is insider information that gets out there to the institutions.  A major advantage is just the time a professional trader has to analyze the market.  Personally, I do my research on the evenings and weekends.  I can't do any of this while the market is open as I have a regular job.  With as volitile as the market is anymore...this is a big advantage for the professional trader.

Anyway, that is just a few things that come to mind but I know I could come up with more.  Personally, I believe there is a lot of distrust of banking and wallstreet right now.  Some might be misguided but much of it well deserved.  It's easy for a small investor to have all kinds of theories as to what the institutions and banks are doing to minipulate the market.

I think there's a perception, true or false, that big institutions are going to be in the know before little ole me sitting at my macbook at home.  From an information standpoint I feel like I'm at a little bit of a disadvantage.  I am speaking from a day trading standpoint where seconds can make the difference in losing versus winning.

I do also agree that you are at a disadvantage in other areas because you have trading rules (whatever they're called) that most portfolios have to follow.  x percentage in small cap, x percentage in energy etc...  However, if I see the market is tanking I can dump everything into cash or go short on the indexes to ride the wave down.  You have to bunker down and wait for it to come back.

Ray-  I'm not taking offense here, I'm honestly curious as to what the public thinks of institutions and how the market works.  To put it simply, what you are referring to is not the big institutional players.  You are referring to High Frequency players and hedge funds.  They have the freedom to run up/down.  However, you have an advantage against them being small.  They are looling for the big players to do that too.  Some do have supercomputers, but really I see them more as adding liquidity to the market than I do gaming.  The computers aren't always right either, and again.  It's harder for them to sniff out your orders being small.  They are looking for patterns to show them there is a big player trying to get in or out.  If they pick off your small order it's really no advantage to them.  Sure, maybe they make a penny.  But, you also got filled where you might not had otherwise and the trade overall is not enough to impact the market in most cases.

Tri42/Ray-  As an institutional player I cannot manipulate as you are referring.  The funds mandates do not allow it.  We are working with long term focussed funds.  The point of these funds is not to let a trader loose to manipulate positions.  It's to invest long term.  When we get in, I can only buy.  When we get out, I can only sell.  There is no manipulation in between.  The risk of that is too great and would not be accepted well by shareholders.  It doesn't happen that way.

Absolutely, there are times when things go bad it may take me days or months to get out of something you can get out of in a second.

As far as information....that's kind of the game isn't it?  The guy who does the best/most research wins.  We have a little of an advantage as big companies come visit us update us on things.  However, they are not allowed to say anthing that hasn't already come out on a newswire.