Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffett both advocate this method for the majority of people. In Graham's day it was Mutual Funds -- these days it's Index Funds/ETF's. If you're interested in some grounding, humbling, & timeless reading on it, read stuff by the aforementioned, such as http://www.amazon.com/The-Intelligent-Investor-Rev-ebook/dp/... (no referral).
It sounds like the only reason OP doesn't want to invest is because of high-speed trading and tricky professional investors. But, Graham and Buffett both suggest, with a long enough runway, you aren't even playing the same game as them. It doesn't matter whether you saved a couple bucks on a stock today and if some day trader profited off your millisecond slowness -- if you trust your own decision making skills, you'll own the stock for years and will save gray hairs with their mantra "I don't know and I don't care" (as a response to the question, "What happened in the stock market today?").
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Collins-Business-... [2] http://www.amazon.com/What-Learned-Losing-Million-Dollars-eb...