Wall Street's Research Jobs Are the Most Likely To Be Upended By AI

[DEAD7]

Research analysts are the most likely employees on Wall Street to find themselves working with -- or being replaced by -- robots, according to a survey by Greenwich Associates. By next year, some 75% of banks and financial firms will either explore or implement artificial intelligence technologies, harnessing a variety of digital services to extract insights from mountains of data. While AI is probably near the peak of its hype cycle, several factors have helped it gain traction in recent years, according to Greenwich. Billions of images and documents are now available online for training computers to spot patterns and other high-level tasks. Advances in graphical processing units, which are adept at the kind of data crunching required by AI, are making sifting through daunting datasets much easier.
The cloud has also made it cheaper for researchers and startups to boost their computing power to service sophisticated AI-enabled systems. AI makes sense for financial research, as machines can crunch reams of data more quickly than human analysts and, with the right data, identify obscure correlations and patterns.

Wall Street's research jobs are the most likely to be disrupted by AI

 

[hashmander]

everybody getting that AI work.

 

[Friskies]

Quant weeps.

 

[Jimi Swagger]

Good riddance. Most of the work is clerical/administrative anyway in that bloated sector. The finance industry is taking away too many skilled workers who could be curing diseases and improving infrastructure which in turns shrinks the economy (both brain drain and GDP) because folk want easy money. I’ve noticed this with my own childhood friends, physicists who worked on derivative formulas for major banks. It’s not just hedge fund managers. No one wants to work for NASA or go back to a low 6 figure government contracting after making a million dollars (I am hating ). Not just conjecture, The Economist noted this a while back:

In short, the finance sector lures away high-skilled workers from other industries. The finance sector then lends the money to businesses, but tends to favour those firms that have collateral they can pledge against the loan. This usually means builders and property developers. Businessmen are lured into this sector rather than into riskier projects that require high R&D spending and have less collateral to pledge.

https://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2015/02/finance-sector-and-growth


Most of the money generated from finance comes from bureaucracy. For instance 85% of profits at JP Morgan and Chase, one of the largest banks, came from fees and penalties. Capitalists is in bed with the state and lobbies for rules that people can't follow then punish them for this. Cultural logic (conditioning) upholds this violence for monetary extraction (How else could they legally extract fees that you willingly pay military, police, judiciary system were not on their side?) David Graeber explains this in his books. Maybe with less bodies in finance things will reverse and people will find something more meaningful and useful for their lives for a more peaceful planet. Or maybe we will just automate our own demise within the current paradigm.

 

[Futuristic Eskimo]

Good riddance. Most of the work is clerical/administrative anyway in that bloated sector. The finance industry is taking away too many skilled workers who could be curing diseases and improving infrastructure which in turns shrinks the economy (both brain drain and GDP) because folk want easy money. I’ve noticed this with my own childhood friends, physicists who worked on derivative formulas for major banks. It’s not just hedge fund managers. No one wants to work for NASA or go back to a low 6 figure government contracting after making a million dollars (I am hating ). Not just conjecture, The Economist noted this a while back:

In short, the finance sector lures away high-skilled workers from other industries. The finance sector then lends the money to businesses, but tends to favour those firms that have collateral they can pledge against the loan. This usually means builders and property developers. Businessmen are lured into this sector rather than into riskier projects that require high R&D spending and have less collateral to pledge.

https://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2015/02/finance-sector-and-growth


Most of the money generated from finance comes from bureaucracy. For instance 85% of profits at JP Morgan and Chase, one of the largest banks, came from fees and penalties. Capitalists is in bed with the state and lobbies for rules that people can't follow then punish them for this. Cultural logic (conditioning) upholds this violence for monetary extraction (How else could they legally extract fees that you willingly pay military, police, judiciary system were not on their side?) David Graeber explains this in his books. Maybe with less bodies in finance things will reverse and people will find something more meaningful and useful for their lives for a more peaceful planet. Or maybe we will just automate our own demise within the current paradigm.

You shouldn't make up numbers to support valid arguments. Ruins the rest of your point.

 

[hayesc0]

everybody getting that AI work.

Yep people aren't taking this shyt seriously it's not just gonna impact low wage earners gonna be everyone.

 

[Geek Nasty]

Stock market AI is retarded as hell. All they're doing is looking for blips in stock prices that follow patterns. Has nothing to do with how good or bad a company is doing, all they care about is knowing beef prices tick up 0.2% for 2 hours after some ag report is released. Bullshyt short-term electronic money they're generating. This is going to cause some serious problems in the future.

 

[Futuristic Eskimo]

Stock market AI is retarded as hell. All they're doing is looking for blips in stock prices that follow patterns. Has nothing to do with how good or bad a company is doing, all they care about is knowing beef prices tick up 0.2% for 2 hours after some ag report is released. Bullshyt short-term electronic money they're generating. This is going to cause some serious problems in the future.

You can program a computer to analyze the fundamental performance of a company and trade based on that analysis as well, though.

 

[Geek Nasty]

You can program a computer to analyze the fundamental performance of a company and trade based on that analysis as well, though.

You can, but I don't think that's what's happening. I think this flash trading is based on minute fluctuations in markets that companies can take advantage of because they have instantaneous access to markets and they have the capital to profit off of small stock price changes. I did a short paper on it in college and the impression I got was flash trading wasn't about fundamentals, it was about gaming the system. Maybe things have changed, but the researchers are losing their jobs because Wall Street is making money off patterns, not predicting which companies will do well.

 

[Futuristic Eskimo]

You can, but I don't think that's what's happening. I think this flash trading is based on minute fluctuations in markets that companies can take advantage of because they have instantaneous access to markets and they have the capital to profit off of small stock price changes. I did a short paper on it in college and the impression I got was flash trading wasn't about fundamentals, it was about gaming the system. Maybe things have changed, but the researchers are losing their jobs because Wall Street is making money off patterns, not predicting which companies will do well.

Patterns can be based off fundamentals or technical signals and not all automated trading is short-term flash trading. You are right, though, the vast majority of program trading and high frequency "market making" is technicals-based.

Research analysts jobs at major investment banks on the equity side are mainly to be fanboys of certain stocks to win other investment banking business. The major driver of research jobs cuts at banks is MiFid II right now, not automation or changing trading behavior.

 

[ace416]

Can't wait for this ai hype to die down

 

[Serious]

You can, but I don't think that's what's happening. I think this flash trading is based on minute fluctuations in markets that companies can take advantage of because they have instantaneous access to markets and they have the capital to profit off of small stock price changes. I did a short paper on it in college and the impression I got was flash trading wasn't about fundamentals, it was about gaming the system. Maybe things have changed, but the researchers are losing their jobs because Wall Street is making money off patterns, not predicting which companies will do well.

you're not wrong, I saw this in a frontline documentary.

You still got that paper?

 

[Geek Nasty]

you're not wrong, I saw this in a frontline documentary.

You still got that paper?

That was years back, but a lot of it was about Waddell & Reed and how they started the Flash Crash and how one company's script started a feedback loop in other algorithms that destroyed billions in wealth and took down a couple legit companies too.

 

[Reece]

That was years back, but a lot of it was about Waddell & Reed and how they started the Flash Crash and how one company's script started a feedback loop in other algorithms that destroyed billions in wealth and took down a couple legit companies too.

Didn’t this happen in 1987 too?

 

[Geek Nasty]

Didn’t this happen in 1987 too?

dont know