Today, programmed trading comprises almost 25 pct of all trading on the NYSE. Interestingly there are only about 15 NYSE members who do 90-pct of all of it. The Big Four, with a total of 47.4-pct, are Goldman Sachs, Lehman Bros, Morgan Stanley and UBS. The next three, with an additional total of 24.4-pct, are Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse. The third tier, comprising four with a total of 14.3-pct, are RBC Capital Markets, Banc of America Securities, Bear Stearns and Citigroup. In total, the top 15 broker-dealers do 90.0 pct of all program trading.

The trades are done in one of three modes: (i) principal, (ii) customer facilitation, and (iii) Agency.

Interestingly, UBS does less than 1-pct Agency, plus almost zero customer facilitation and (get this) 9.7-pct of all NYSE programmed trading as principal. Moreover, the UBS computers are so busy presumably making profits for the UBS account, they result in a total of 2.3-pct of all shares traded by all sources (bought or sold) YTD on the NYSE. That is amazing! At least, this is what the table on page 21 tells us in the attached report by Morgan Stanley, dated October 4 (data as of Sept 22). Download Oct 4 MS report on Brokers, Asset Managers.

I created a fuller view of the data, as follows:

I get the sense today that the capital market has fulfilled my wildest dreams of 25 years ago " duelling computers.

The major financial houses today have created products of every possible type. Every asset and liability imaginable has been securitized, ie, reduced to tradable prices.

And the big guys " the ones I refer to as Humungous Bank & Broker " no longer want to be in the customer service business anymore " they are just traders.

And, computer-based traders at that.

Pretty soon nobody gets served, nobody has a job. We'll just sit around wondering if our machine is going to spit out profits or (like Brian Hunter's) losses.

Blame it on the digital age " and smart people who put these digital systems together.

So, if you are a young person wanting to go into the financial services industry, you have two choices " broker or asset manager.

Well, one and a half choices really. An asset manager is really an asset gatherer " still done by humans even if they happen to be sitting in a phone room in India " while the "management" is done " you got it " by a computer.

And, if you want to be a broker, you will likely have to be a computer systems architect.

Financial services companies today should really be called SUN-Oracle, SAP-IBM, or whatever. That's why all the banks are switching to alphabet-soup names.

You think UBS stands for Union Bank of Switzerland? Hah, try Universal Buy-Sell.

You thought I was joshing a couple weeks ago when I suggested that the day would come when the minimum account size taken on by HB&B " UBS probably " would hit $1 billion.

For that you get invited to the office for tea and biscuits and maybe 27 minutes of your host's time. The rest of us have been reduced to a computer number -- we have to use bank cards, ATM's, and can set up our trading account on a website. Then we'll trade ETF's and forex.

This sure is a changing world. But then I saw it all in my crystal ball 25 years ago.