stock market

The days of frantic Wall Street traders shouting and waving pieces of paper are long gone. Today's traders "rely on sophisticated computer programs to execute their trades in a very clever way, to send them down to the electronic markets, and to disguise their intentions so that their competitors don't know what they're up to," says Matthew Klein, author of Con Ed and founder of Collective2.com. In fact, the most frantic thing traders do these days is "go and get themselves another cup of coffee when things aren't going well," says Klein. But easy trading combined with risks hidden behind complex algorithms is a dangerous combination. "Computers can only make you faster and more efficient at what you normally do," says Klein. "In many cases you just get a lot better and faster at losing your money."