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To: soup who wrote (22945)	2/2/1999 12:42:00 AM
From: soup	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213173

OT Risky Business: 'Day Trading' on the Rise via Washington Post >Brenda Richardson wanted to squeeze a quick bundle out of the bull market to help put her daughter and niece through college. So in late 1996, the Texas pharmacist plunked down her entire savings of $10,000 to open an account at a Houston securities firm, starting a journey that would take her deep into the addictive world of day trading. Richardson was given the secret code to a room full of men staring zombie-like at computer screens flickering with stock symbols. She sat at her assigned terminal and, without any investment experience, started buying and selling shares for herself. "I had no idea what I was doing," she said. "I sort of looked around to see what other people were doing." What she witnessed was a form of high-tech gambling – traders darting in and out of stocks in minutes, sometimes seconds, usually selling all their shares before the day's closing bell. Richardson said she quickly got into debt and handed over control of her account to a sweet-talking fellow trader. He moved her account to another firm where he was able, through excessive borrowing and wild buying and selling of shares, to trade more than $35 million worth of stock in her name over three months. Richardson said she ultimately lost $60,000.< washingtonpost.com