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The market's advocates point out that computer-driven trading is at least as responsible for the stock market's spectacular heights as for its frightening lows. And from the very beginning of stock trading, the risks and rewards inherent in that ceaseless up and down motion have been exactly what brought investors to exchanges in the first place. Enthuses George Noble, manager of a $1.7 billion foreign stock fund for Boston-based Fidelity Investments, a mutual-fund group: "If you are insecure or you can't stand to lose, this is the wrong business to be in. It is a game in which you are pitted against thousands of other investors who are trying to outsmart you." The stock market may be faster, rougher and more complicated than ever before, but for all its painful perils and uncertainties, it is still the best game of its kind in town.
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