They most insightful thing here would have been to learn how those traders survived, adapted, or moved on.
It's possible everyone just stops hiring new folks and lets the incumbents automate it. Or it's possible they all washed cars the rest of their careers.
I knew a bunch of them. Most of them moved on: retired or started over in new careers. It hit them hard. Maybe not so hard because trading was a lucrative career, but most of us don't have that kind of dough to fall back on.
+1 this. Saw it first hand, it was ugly. Post-9/11 stress and ‘08 cleared out a lot of others. Interestingly, I’ve seen some of them surface in crypto.
- post-9/11 stress and ‘08 was a big jolt, and pushed a lot of folks out.
- Managed their money fine (or not) for when the job slowed down and also when ‘08 hit
- “traders” became “salespeople” or otherwise managing relationships
- Saw the trend, leaned into it hard, you now have Citadel, Virtu, JS, and so on.
- Saw the trend, specialized or were already in assets hard to automate.
- Senior enough to either steer the algo farms + jr traders, or become an algo steerer themselves
- Not senior enough, not rich enough, not flexible enough or not interested anymore and now drive Uber, mobile dog washers, joined law enforcement (3x example I know of).
It's possible everyone just stops hiring new folks and lets the incumbents automate it. Or it's possible they all washed cars the rest of their careers.