Morning Coffee: Existing traders threatened with extinction by new generation. Rats take Manhattan

14 June 2018

3 minute read

Morning Coffee: Existing traders threatened with extinction by new generation. Rats take Manhattan

The rise of the robots in the trading world just got a little bit scarier for the people still employed by banks to buy and sell stocks. Being good at their day job is no longer enough – they must also have some coding skills.

Technology has recently been taking over traditional trading roles across the finance sector as algorithms and artificial intelligence outperform (expensive) humans. Late last year, for example, most of the vacancies in Goldman Sachs’ securities business weren’t for traders – they were for developers.

Traders, however, are starting to fight back against automation by trying to add tech skills to their resumes. Citi has announced that it will teach Python, a programming language often used by banks’ trading operations, as part of its training classes for analysts joining the firm in July. And it wasn’t Citi’s techies who came up with the idea – its traders wanted the new course added to the curriculum, reports Bloomberg.

This suggests that the new generation of traders will very soon be judged on their ability to code. “At least an understanding of coding seems to be valuable,” Lee Waite, head of Citi’s markets and securities-services unit in North America, told Bloomberg. “We’re moving more quickly into this world.”

Even some of the old guard are falling in line. Paco Ybarra, Citi’s global head of markets and securities services, has reportedly taken a version of the Python class.

Separately, summer on Wall Street doesn’t just mean going for alfresco lunches and rooftop cocktails – it also means wading through rats on your way to work. Last year, rat-related complaints to the city’s 311 helpline increase 10%, part of a three-year upward trend, reports the Wall Street Journal. Manhattan, where almost all NYC bankers work, had the most complaints per square mile. A Brooklyn-to-Manhattan commute is the most rodent infested – Brooklyn boasted the most total complaints in 2017.