There are lots of investors and traders/speculators who beat the market. I think this is one of the main reasons people persist in trading despite reading articles/posts like the one of this thread. The key thing these people don't understand, though, is that the number of investors who do beat the market (at any given level of outperformance) is no greater than what is predicted by investment decisions governed solely by chance. In other words, there is no or at least very little evidence that the people who beat the market do so by making use of _skill_ (there is some evidence that skilled investors can expect to outperform the market by a percentage point or so per annum, i.e., small outperformance and few of these "skilled" investors). The statistical analysis of the performance of investors over last half century and more is basis of so-called "efficient market theory" (EMT), which most misunderstand. EMT does not say that investors can't outperform the market. This is obviously false, since many do. EMT says basically that investors should not expect to be able to use skill to outperform market; if they in fact outperform it is the result of chance, and there was equal chance of underperforming the market.
I'm always amused at the number of people who read about EMT and discard it as "obviously false". Do they really think that high-powered intellects have been analyzing this stuff for decades and come up with something that can be rejected by a man-on-the-street as "obviously false"? Hmm, perhaps the man-on-the-street is misunderstanding what they're saying. Two good sources to start with are Malkiel's classic _A Random Walk Down Wall Street_, and William Bernstein's dependable investing guide _The Four Pillars of Investing_.