Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers

technologyreview.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 155 posts

Re: Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers

#91

Post by AznHisoka »

burkaman wrote: post #11
tomelders wrote: post #4

A agency that I once worked for was asked to create a presentation of the future of trading for a well known trading platform. It was the typical fluff around voice interfaces, augmented reality, VR and all that drivel. But we all knew what the future really meant - taking people out of the equation - but we also knew that the people paying for the presentation didn't want to hear that. When people talk about the ris…

Isn't this type of trading sort of unique in how easy it is to consume the data? Even in other investing areas, people who just "look at data and make decisions" cannot be easily replaced until computers can read and understand natural language and understand the state of the world. I can't immediately think of anything else this type of automation could apply to.

i agree 100%. i think the only reason traders can be replaced by machines is because these traders didnt perform better than monkeys shooting darts.

Re: Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers

#92

Post by gthippo »

tomelders wrote: post #4

A agency that I once worked for was asked to create a presentation of the future of trading for a well known trading platform. It was the typical fluff around voice interfaces, augmented reality, VR and all that drivel. But we all knew what the future really meant - taking people out of the equation - but we also knew that the people paying for the presentation didn't want to hear that. When people talk about the ris…

The terrifying thing is that you don't even need to reach human-level performance to cause structural unemployment. As a hypothetical example, if automation can make top-performers in your field 10x more efficient, that makes 90% of people in that role redundant.

This feels a lot scarier to me since as a ML engineer, I rarely see applications where we can reach human level performance easily but the idea of making existing top performers 2-5x more effective feels much more viable.

The idea of 80% of people in relatively high-skill jobs who are used to a relatively high income level becoming redundant is a pretty scary one.

Re: Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers

#94

Post by gonehome »

aabajian wrote: post #35
tomelders wrote: post #4

A agency that I once worked for was asked to create a presentation of the future of trading for a well known trading platform. It was the typical fluff around voice interfaces, augmented reality, VR and all that drivel. But we all knew what the future really meant - taking people out of the equation - but we also knew that the people paying for the presentation didn't want to hear that. When people talk about the ris…

>>But of your job is to look at data and make descisions based on that data, you're gonna be the first to go. I posted the other day about machine learning and radiology. It's the type of job that squarely fits your definition, although things move much more solely in medicine.

My dad is a neuroradiologist so I've seen a decent amount of the reading work (which is one component of the job - though a big one). I also thought it'd be well suited to ML, but I suspect the future is more suggestions and flagging things in scans rather than entirely replacing the doctor (I'd be surprised if this isn't happening already in some capacity).

It seems risky to lose the human understanding and interpretation of the images. Human augmentation is probably better?

Already people make assumptions because of not understanding constraints in how the underlying tech works (like how FMRI is monitoring changes in blood flow not neural activity directly).

Re: Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers

#95

Post by api_or_ipa »

grondilu wrote: post #56
teachrdan wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another obvious example is actuaries and any number of other analysts in the insurance industry. According to Google[1], actuaries earn an average of just over $97k/year. While this may not strictly be an "investing area," it's a clear target for automation. 1. https://www.google.com/search?q=actuaries

I don't know about actuaries, but I do remember there was an article lately about an insurance company in Japan that replaced hundreds of workers with IBM's Watson. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/05/japanese-...

That's really interesting. In my circle of friends, most of us can't point to a single success of Watson, despite it's very publicized capabilities. This may only be a small company, but almost certainly larger insurance agencies & medical foundations must be on to this.

Re: Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers

#96

Post by fourthark »

Eridrus wrote: post #43
burkaman wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anything you need to know about the world is in a table somewhere No it isn't. If I read an article about the Volkswagen emissions scandal, what table do I look in to figure out how much consumers will care, and how aggressive various governments will be with their punishment? When Disney buys the rights to Star Wars, where should I look to see if it's worth what they paid for it? Should I rely on data from 30 year…

I think a lot of people get hung up on how humans make decisions, with the expectation that you need to be able to understand the same ideas to perform the task. Even if a computer can't figure out the stats you mention, maybe it doesn't matter? Maybe just reacting fast enough to what people in the market are doing is good enough? Maybe simple sentiment analysis on articles on Disney around the web is a good enough p…

Sounds like that's giving the humans who are left in the market 10x the power.

Re: Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers

#97

Post by LudoHK »

Shalhoub wrote: post #71

"Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers" You mean 600 traders replaced with a High Frequency Trading (HFT) computer. http://bertdohmen.com/hft-algo-computers-crash-fx-markets/

Very different they are not talking about HF, it's more about automatize all the processes of entire desk especially around equities. they are not mentioning at all about HF in the article.

Re: Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers

#98

Post by pbk1 »

fredgrott wrote: post #46

My question is are the jobs disrupted really stolen.. according to Mr Klarman(see the NYTime article) this automation trends lead to more inefficiency in markets not less and thus give opportunities to some traders to bet long term in the other direction.. Or are those disrupted jobs just getting re-deployed as new trading businesses betting on some long term stuff..

Klarman said Trump's protectionist stance against automation and globalization will lead to market inefficiencies.

He also said the increase in passive investment relying on the efficient markets hypothesis (EMH) will eventually lead to mispricings and inefficiencies that can be taken advantage of by active investors such as himself.

Those two things have nothing to do with the automation of execution trading and market-making. So he is not claiming that automating the execution trading and market-making done by banks in highly liquid markets (equities in OP) will lead to more inefficiency.

Re: Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers

#99

Post by debt »

tomelders wrote: post #4

A agency that I once worked for was asked to create a presentation of the future of trading for a well known trading platform. It was the typical fluff around voice interfaces, augmented reality, VR and all that drivel. But we all knew what the future really meant - taking people out of the equation - but we also knew that the people paying for the presentation didn't want to hear that. When people talk about the ris…

Software engineers think they're somehow immune to the cycle.

Re: Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers

#100

Post by Gracana »

gthippo wrote: post #92
tomelders wrote: post #4

A agency that I once worked for was asked to create a presentation of the future of trading for a well known trading platform. It was the typical fluff around voice interfaces, augmented reality, VR and all that drivel. But we all knew what the future really meant - taking people out of the equation - but we also knew that the people paying for the presentation didn't want to hear that. When people talk about the ris…

The terrifying thing is that you don't even need to reach human-level performance to cause structural unemployment. As a hypothetical example, if automation can make top-performers in your field 10x more efficient, that makes 90% of people in that role redundant. This feels a lot scarier to me since as a ML engineer, I rarely see applications where we can reach human level performance easily but the idea of making ex…

Lots of high-earning people tied up in managing money is pretty inefficient for society, though. Maybe those people can switch to factory jobs and help reduce the cost of common things for the common person.
Post reply on HN