Thursday’s Headlines: Morgan Stanley Swaps Bond Traders for Computers

The future is now. Top-paid bond traders at Morgan Stanley are getting the pink slip, while the bank beefs up its IT department in an effort to save its bond trading business. In essence, people are being replaced by machines, according to the Wall Street Journal. This new policy has reduced slashed headcount of interest-rate and foreign-exchange traders on some desks by 10 percent to 20 percent.

Says the paper: “Morgan Stanley's head of interest-rate trading, Glenn Hadden, has told colleagues in recent months that the trading floor of the future will surround a few traders with the hum of powerful machines.” That desk employs 200 of the company’s 1,000 workers.

Experts say this shift will be seen in other financial intuitions in coming years, as Dodd-Frank verbiage makes way for these changes. But Morgan Stanley has found motivation to be a frontrunner after a recent credit downgrade left the investment bank scrambling to make changes.

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