[lintiness]

yeah, i really don't know what these guys are talking about. the business day to day has been massively revamped by automation. there are hft ops that are blasting millions and millions of orders a second and probably account for 70%+ of all trading volume.

[cm2187]

I think you have cash equity in mind. This is a very small subset of what investment banks trade.

[lintiness]

i trade financial futures and cash equity. i realize ibanks offer leveraged bets on all kinds of nonsense to provide a "service", but pretty much any strategy known to humanity can be achieved on an exchange with negligible counterparty risk

[cm2187]

Being centrally cleared to reduce counterparty risk and being traded electronically on an exchange are two distinct things.

Electronic trading does change dramatically the shape and profile of a trading floor. Introducing central clearing with margining not so much.

You won't achieve electronic trading anytime soon on products where there are perhaps at most 200-300 buyers in the world, must of who are only interested in buying big chunks.