What the day traders are up to...

Certainly an alternative investment strategy to trying to identify good businesses that are undervalued, then buying and holding!

From the Sydney Morning Herald.

They are the new breed of derivatives traders: they have no clients, they trade their firm's own money using high-powered computer programs like F1 - Formula One, so-called because it is so fast - based on secret algorithms.

US sharemarket officials and Congress are mulling bans on some of their tricks. And it is so profitable, the big banks are using it. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have devoted pages to the dark arts of ''high-intensity'' and ''low-latency'' trading and the world of ''dark pools''.