In spite of the advice of experts, many small investors try to play the great game, I know several. In the past, the cumbersome process of buying and selling securities tended to control this. But it's a form of addiction, like gambling, and today these unfortunates now load themselves up with all the technology and software, and they fancy themselves to be very knowledgeable. Investment is replaced by speculation. I have a neighbor who is a tragedy in the making.

Probably a more significant factor are many professional and institutional investors who have the latest communications software, backed up by sophisticated algorithms designed to extract profit from fast moving trends and narrow margins. Classical markets are now being replaced by what you could call relativistic markets. As these individuals become more of a feature of the markets they affect the way they react, altering all the original assumptions made in those algorithms. It's a classic example of the observer influencing the observed, a sort of Uncertainty Principle for markets. I guess you could call it quantum finance.