FLASH FRIDAY is a weekly content series looking at the past, present and future of capital markets trading and technology. FLASH FRIDAY is sponsored by Instinet, a Nomura company.
Traders Magazine has covered personnel moves in capital markets trading and technology dating back at least to the 1990s, with a weekly column once called “Fast Track” and now “On the Move”.
Anecdotally, the week of July 12 has seen as much movement as any week in recent memory.
Broadway Technology and R.J. O’Brien named new COOs. Liquidnet added a senior execution consultant. GTS added an MD. BlackRock hired a new marketing head for its Aladdin unit. A senior exchange technology executive is moving to the digital assets space (see Monday’s On the Move column for details on that). Those were just a few of the moves.
There is evidence of a strong overall financial and fintech job market, rather than just a one-off week that can be explained by randomness or firms getting their teams set ahead of the late-summer slowdown in activity.
Insider recently reported that Wall Street recruiters have been busy in 2021. Traders “have been on the move after a massive year of revenue hauls” at big banks. Credit is a particular area of strength, Insider reported, as corporate-bond traders “are locking in guaranteed pay at new gigs after putting up a big year.”
Equities has been no slouch, either, as stock trading helped Morgan Stanley’s second-quarter results top analyst estimates.
The link back to the On the Move column is clear: trading generates revenue that disperses across the market ecosystem, boosting the top line of brokers, exchanges, trading platforms, and technology providers. Those organizations are thus more likely to be expansion-minded, and what better way to grow than to make a key hire or two (or five).
To be sure, there’s more afoot here than just strength in trading. The overall job market has been strong coming out of the pandemic, and there is also the expectation for further normalization of the economy into the fall. So tailwinds exceed headwinds..
Who knows what the fall will bring; perhaps there will be a buy-the-rumor-sell-the-news situation that sets things back, and diminishes hiring. But at least for the near future, Traders Magazine expects more bountiful On the Move columns.
