Skip to main content

Wall Street's Inevitable Move Towards Automation

Informative article from Bloomberg about Wall Street's inevitable move towards automation.

It's widely accepted that "low-skill" jobs will be the easiest to automate, such as many fast food jobs. But what about fancy Wall Street traders with their Harvard MBA's and all? It appears they aren't safe, either.

This isn't exactly news. The majority of stock trading today is done by computer algorithms. And it has long seemed to me that, if any job were ripe to be replaced by robots, it would be stock traders, money managers, and similar jobs.

Some quotes from the article:

Yet in interviews, about a dozen Wall Street executives and consultants responsible for deploying technologies -- and steeped in their capabilities -- were more bearish on humans. Machines will take over task after task, they said, and banks simply won’t need nearly as many people.
...
It’s time for senior managers to stop sugarcoating, said Simon Moss, who has been advising banks and investing firms as head of Grant Thornton LLP’s fintech and innovation practice for the industry.

“Are there positions in financial services that are actually untouchable from technology? The simple answer is ‘No,’” Moss said. “It’s just a case of when.”
...
Floor traders who once shouted orders in raucous marble-columned exchanges have seen their numbers dwindle since the 1990s, forcing many to seek new work.
...
Can jobs held by office-dwelling millionaires disappear like those on factory floors?

The answer to this last question is yes. The banks can boost earnings by eliminating those "office-dwelling millionaire" jobs, and the banks' shareholders will want them to.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Insurance Companies Trying to Gag Superstorm Sandy Victims?

As reported in several news articles ( this one  is free), in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy, engineering firms were hired by insurance companies to inspect the homes of people making claims for flood damage.  There have been allegations that two of the engineering firms, U.S. Forensic out of Louisiana, and GEB HiRise out of Uniondale, forged property damage reports in order to deny claims. The NY State Attorney General is investigating those allegations and wants to talk to the homeowners.  At the same time, there are about 1,800 lawsuits in federal court involving the insurance coverage claims. A three-judge panel is trying to expedite resolution of the cases.  Last week it was revealed that one of the insurance companies, The Standard Fire Insurance Company, which is a subsidiary of Travelers Insurance, drafted language in a settlement document saying that any homeowner who accepts a payout of their claims cannot cooperate with the criminal invest...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Germanwings Tragedy and Claims for Negligent Retention

There has been a lot of news about the terrible crash of Germanwings Flight 9525, which resulted in the death of 150 people when the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, (apparently) intentionally crashed the plane into the French Alps. Reports are that Lubitz had suicidal tendencies and had been declared medically unfit to fly . What may soon follow are lawsuits against Germanwings and Lufthansa (which owns Germanwings) for claims similar to what New York calls "negligent retention": A claim for negligent supervision or retention arises when an employer places an employee in a position to cause foreseeable harm, harm which the injured party most probably would have been spared had the employer taken reasonable care in supervising or retaining the employee. Vione v. Tewell,  12 Mic.3d 973, 979, 820 N.Y.S.2d 682 (Sup.Ct., New York County, 2006). Under New York law, a claim for negligent hiring, supervision or retention, "in addition to the standard elements of negligence,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Recent Cases: Appeals Court Reverses Lower Court in Slip and Fall

In a decision issued on March 18, 2015 , a New York appeals court reversed a lower court decision dismissing a slip and fall case. The plaintiff was a 12-year-old boy. He was injured when he slipped and fell on "loose and broken pieces of asphalt" as he was running towards an ice cream truck near an Ikea store in Brooklyn. There were two interesting things about the decision. First, like many slip and fall cases, the case turned on constructive notice--how long was the loose/broken asphalt on the ground before the accident so that the defendants should have seen it and corrected the dangerous condition? The appeals court said the defendants failed to show when they last cleaned or inspected the area, so they did not establish lack of constructive notice. The more interesting thing is that apparently the boy told staff at the hospital where he was taken that he tripped over his shoelaces. The defendants found this in the hospital records and basically said, "Ha! He di...
Post a Comment
Read more