Being an investment banker is one of the coolest jobs ever – you get paid insane amounts of money even when everyone around you is grateful for even having a job, and you get to play with a pool of (other people’s) money when it comes to making investment decisions – make money for them, and you’d be swimming in money like Scrooge McDuck, lost money, you’ll still get a sizeable bonus and at least the money that you burned isn’t yours. What happens when you replace human traders with robots?
A new report by the British Government’s Foresight panel claims that automated trading by computer algorithms might just oust a significant proportion of financial services workers, but the process might take a decade before the full circle comes around. These algorithms already see action by investment banks and hedge funds in order to make profit from lightning-quick trades on tiny movements in stock prices.
This sounds like bad news for high-powered traders, but I am quite sure that those traders will not be out of a job anytime soon – many of us still like the human touch when dealing with a particular service, and you can’t ask a robot out to a lunch, can you?