In a small New York office casually dressed twenty-somethings gamble thousands with the click of a mouse. On average these day traders keep their volatile shares for just 4½ minutes. It’s a world away from the sweaty hollering of Wall Streets’ New York Stock Exchange. The meteoric rise of internet trading has sidelined the Wall Street of old – the online Nasdaq exchange is the preferred forum for leading net firms and for the footloose day traders. In just one year 25 year-old Nick Birbas has gone from waiter to laptop legend riding the bull market and earning $10,000 a week. The payoff in Dot Commerce is spectacular. A pair of computer nerds built an entertainment website, called it Globe.com, sat back and watched as frenzied financiers snapped up their shares. “People said you guys are now worth 97 million dollars each!” So will the bubble burst? Like many other internet firms Globe.com have yet to turn a profit. In the clubs of Wall Street many believe stocks like theirs have been wildly over-valued. “Old timers like us wait for the day of reckoning,” smirks one analyst. But for now there really seems to be no end to this boom.

Produced by ABC Australia