Perhaps some start this way. But in terms of the general trend of talented engineers and mathematicians being sucked into this quant vortex, it is a matter of making wealthy people wealthier.
Automation in trading makes all investors wealthier via lower fees. Trading costs basically nothing nowadays, and that is because far fewer people are employed to do it.
Obviously, the people who own the automation will want a cut of the rewards, like any other business.
Obviously NASDAQ and electronic trading systems are a good innovation. But firms basically doing arbitrage or exploiting uneven network latency are not that economically productive.
Well lowering market spreads is all about increasing the returns for capital, and incenctivising overfinancialisation. It's hardly curing cancer is it?
At worst it's actively harmful if you believe that the current state of turbo-financialised capitalism has its drawbacks.
> Network latency
Not really sure what you're talking about but surely spending billions of dollars to bring rtt latencies to 50 micros or whatever is not really a great use of money and top engineering talent. Again, it's playing an arbitrage game but not really delivering any value.
Do you mean that high salaries indicate a demand in the market? Not much argument there, although it is sometimes the case that large companies hire talent purely to starve competition. But what I'm really questioning is whether those high salaries translate to value to society.
Obviously, the people who own the automation will want a cut of the rewards, like any other business.