I think this year began and once again, Nasdaq is performing reasonably well, notwithstanding the correction. Stephen Roach, chief strategist of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter has said volatility is just one of the ways the market addresses this disconnect in valuations. It's here to stay. I don't think the vast majority of individual investors are suddenly trading more, but there is a small group doing a great deal of trading. That does move prices rather quickly.
Institutions can trade for almost nothing.
I think these day traders are gamblers, but they tend to be momentum players. So they just sit at the computer all day, chasing the momentum and hoping. They'll trade if they can book a sixteenth of a point, much less an eighth of a point. You refer to lemmings, and I think that's an excellent analogy. They're chasing the stock going up, and the second it starts going down, they're chasing it on the downside.