The trading world will be in a state of flux for some time to come. IT is transforming the business, and we are some way from discovering just how far. Already the ‘engine rooms’ of organisations involved in the movement of investment instruments are under pressure and the increasingly common use of the phrase ‘keeping the lights on’ among technology professionals is indicative of this pressure.
Author William Gibson once said: “The future is already here. It’s just not very evenly distributed.” Looking at the range of systems that underpin the global market – from physical paper processing to fully automated straight-through processing, from open outcry trading to the algorithms that allow millions of trades to be run in mimicry of human trading behaviour – one can believe this to be true.
