Levitt Warns of Online Risks
WASHINGTON -- The top regulator of the stock market is concerned about the explosion in online trading, through which some of the frenzied buying and selling of Internet-related stocks is being done.</br></br>Yesterday, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt cautioned individual investors that rapid-fire online buying and selling can be hazardous to their savings accounts.</br></br>"Online investors should remember that it is just as easy, if not more, to lose money through the click of a button as it is to make it," Mr. Levitt said in a statement yesterday.</br></br>The remarks follow rising complaints about online-trading services bogging down as investors jockey to trade increasingly volatile technology stocks on the Nasdaq Stock Market.</br></br>Mr. Levitt said he is particularly alarmed by the rise in "day trading," in which sometimes-inexperienced investors trade stocks continuously to reap quick, short-term profits.