Individual traders beat the market all the time, it’s not impossible. But you can’t expect to do it reliably, because in practice it’s essentially gambling, unless you’re Warren Buffett, or those firms that utilize sophisticated quantitative or algorithmic trading.
So for all intents and purposes, the takeaway for regular investors should be that they cannot expect to beat the market (but they can gamble on it if they like).
Lots of people "play the market" as a mostly total game of chance. They might just as well join a giant pool that tries to guess the ratio of alphabetic characters within each morning's top headline of their favorite newspaper.
Warren Buffet buys the newspaper and has significant control of the editor. That's not the same game at all.
There's a lot of talk here about active fund management. Active ownership is playing on a completely different level.
So for all intents and purposes, the takeaway for regular investors should be that they cannot expect to beat the market (but they can gamble on it if they like).