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My 2 cents: The job is actually extremely complicated. I wear many hats daily including working as a software developer, IT project manager/architect, salesman

by phyalow 10y ago

My 2 cents: The job is actually extremely complicated. I wear many hats daily including working as a software developer, IT project manager/architect, salesman to clients, point of contact to other institutions trading desks, legal drafter, tax/accounting policy design, deal negotiator, risk taker/manager, systematic/fundamental strategy research etc. My job title is "Trader". There aren't any dumb big swinging dick 80/90's style traders left shouting buy and sell (if they are it's purely relationships and at small shops). Nearly everyone on my desk has a CS degree or similar quant background. AI/deep learning is currently nowhere near being able to master one of these fields let alone cohesively manage all together in a direction to actually make money (just pay a "trader" a 200k-1.5mn USD a year its much easier). Most grunt work is automated and most outfits do in fact make use of statistical methods/classifiers/predictors and differentiable networks where appropriate. At the crux of it someone needs to manage, design the systems and fill in for them with a bit of intuition and common sense where there are gaps. The world is a chaotic place and its not getting simpler. Machines are not robust against chaos.

fffds 10y ago
And this is why traders won't be replaced by AI - Because most are smart individuals who are continuously increasing their worth by learning new skills and ensuring they work WITH new technology rather than opposing it. They regularly elevate their skillset e.g. from manual trading to monitoring, performing trend analysis on a more automated trading system. I worked in the finance industry as business facing software dev for 10 years and now work in a different but similar industry - my experiences can't be more different. My current industry's business is packed full of "traders" who don't trust the systems, won't work with them and outright refuse to admit the systems can outperform human's PnL numbers (especially not their own) despite being faced with raw numbers saying just that. It's a continuous battle between the technology teams being told to deliver automated systems to reduce costs and increase profitability vs plenty of "traders" who seem to see the systems as some sort of threat. As you say, most of the 'dump big swinging dick' style traders are long gone in finance - they're definitely still around in mine. My guess is that because our industry is significantly smaller meaning less employee opportunities, and the fact that almost all of these "traders" are relatively poorly educated (compared to those in the finance sector) they find it tough to elevate their own skillset to do things such as statistical quantitative analysis etc. If it wasn't for the very high difficulty of entry, my industry is ripe for statistically minded, methodical, quant people to come in and make a killing.
- user5994461 10y ago
  What industry is that?

by phyalow 10y ago

fffds 10y ago

And this is why traders won't be replaced by AI - Because most are smart individuals who are continuously increasing their worth by learning new skills and ensuring they work WITH new technology rather than opposing it. They regularly elevate their skillset e.g. from manual trading to monitoring, performing trend analysis on a more automated trading system. I worked in the finance industry as business facing software dev for 10 years and now work in a different but similar industry - my experiences can't be more different. My current industry's business is packed full of "traders" who don't trust the systems, won't work with them and outright refuse to admit the systems can outperform human's PnL numbers (especially not their own) despite being faced with raw numbers saying just that. It's a continuous battle between the technology teams being told to deliver automated systems to reduce costs and increase profitability vs plenty of "traders" who seem to see the systems as some sort of threat. As you say, most of the 'dump big swinging dick' style traders are long gone in finance - they're definitely still around in mine. My guess is that because our industry is significantly smaller meaning less employee opportunities, and the fact that almost all of these "traders" are relatively poorly educated (compared to those in the finance sector) they find it tough to elevate their own skillset to do things such as statistical quantitative analysis etc. If it wasn't for the very high difficulty of entry, my industry is ripe for statistically minded, methodical, quant people to come in and make a killing.

user5994461 10y ago
What industry is that?