WASHINGTON Some people have lost their taste for the stock market, with many concluding it's more dangerous than they can tolerate for their kids' college money or retirement savings.

And they have reason to be anxious.

At a Senate banking committee hearing in Washington in late September, professionals who have been involved with the high-frequency trading that dominates stock buying and selling confirmed some of the worst fears of individuals struggling with investments: The stock market has been behaving erratically and playing with people's emotions as frenetic stock movements have often been divorced from either the economy or businesses' performance.

It no longer is your parents' or grandparents' stock market. Rather, it's become a Wild West of trading, with errant technology too often in control and setting stocks, commodities, currencies and futures up for violent moves that could make the $1 trillion flash crash of May 2010 look tame by comparison, testified David Lauer, who has designed trading technology and worked as an analyst for Allston Trading and Citadel Investment Group.

"U.S. equity markets are in dire straits," Lauer said. "We are truly in a crisis."

He noted that "retail investors have been fleeing the stock market in droves" and that the Chicago Booth/Kellogg School Financial Trust Index shows "investor confidence is nonexistent with only 15 percent of the public expressing trust in the stock market."

Rather than buying a stock and holding onto it, institutions using high-frequency trading buy and sell stocks constantly in milliseconds, or much faster than a blink of the eye. Lauer said about 50 to 70 percent of the volume of trading in the stock market now takes that form. Often trading systems send out phony trades aimed at manipulating others into buying or selling. The activity can mislead legitimate traders working for mutual funds, pension funds or individuals to buy a stock at too high a price or sell it at too low a price.

It might involve pennies. But when combined day in and day out "it's death by a thousand cuts," said Andy Brooks, vice president and head of U.S. equity trading for one of the nation's largest mutual fund companies, T. Rowe Price. And computer glitches involving everything from Facebook's initial public offering to the flash crash of 2010 have left individuals with the lowest confidence he says he's ever seen.

"As we talk with our clients there is a growing distrust of the casino environment," Brooks testified at a committee hearing convened by Sens. Jack Reed and Mike Crapo. "Speed kills. We don't think it's for the benefit of investors."

Lauer added: "We must be concerned with whether the pendulum has swung too far." He wants the Securities and Exchange Commission to know who is trading, although much of it is now secret. And he wants more regulation because he fears a catastrophic flash crash late in the day could set off a panic that could cause stocks and other securities to plunge worldwide.

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Personal Finance: High-frequency trading keeps some people anxious