In the same vein, a note from the machines:

"Many traders said computer program trades accelerated the slide as market indexes fell through crucial levels." —A barely literate human assessment of yesterday's two-minute market panic.

We are Wall Street. It's our job to make money. We didn't hear you humans complaining when the Dow went up 3000 points in the last nine months.

Just like gambling, it's not a problem for you until we make some of the machines lose so that some of the other machines can win. Your market positions are merely a small casualty in yesterday's triumph of Fidessa's EMS Workstation over Automated Trading Desk in the larger Algorithm Battles during this Long War on Execution Services. Well, yesterday some machines were crapped out and even though the market has come back somewhat, the reporters, the regulators and the hyperactive business blogs are looking for a scapegoat. But what did you think was going to happen when you invented the Turing Test anyway?

Anyone with $1000, lighting reflexes, and insider knowledge could've made $4.1M yesterday. For every $1000 they had.

Many of those trades will be cancelled.

A clever idea, but won't work: "The New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq OMX Group say they will cancel trades involving stocks that saw sharp volatility at the height of the market’s steep intraday decline Thursday afternoon."