There’s always been a seductive charm around the battle between man and machine. Take for instance, Viswanathan Anand, who was on our cover in July. The clash between computers and world chess champs like Anand have always been of epic proportions. Today, technology has progressed so much that millions of chess games have been codified and mapped. Yet, humans have continued to retain their hold on the game that sophisticated supercomputers are still unravelling.
Now, it is the turn of the stock markets. Around the world, a new breed of financial firms is threatening to change the old order. Armed with complex algorithms loaded on their computers, they are able to execute trades based on information received electronically at lightning fast speeds well before human traders can even make sense of the information. Today, more than 80 percent of all stock trades in the US and UK are driven by these automatic programs.(This story appears in the 24 September, 2010 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)