Wall Street's Real Wizards: Who Can Keep Up?

It may surprise you to learn that most of the stock trades in the US are no longer being made by human beings

Robot computers capable of buying and selling thousands of different securities in the time it takes you to blink an eye are the real wizards of Wall Street

CBSNEWS Oct 2010 | These supercomputers—which actually decide which stocks to buy and sell—are operating on highly secret instructions programmed into them by math wizards who may or may not know anything about the value of the companies that are being traded.

It's known as "high frequency trading," a phenomenon that's swept over much of Wall Street in the past few years and played a supporting role in the mini market crash last spring that saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunge 600 points in 15 minutes.

Most people outside of the industry know very little, if anything, about it. But the Securities and Exchange Commission and…

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