I had a privilege of visiting Mellon Bank’s foreign exchange trading floor, meet some people on the inside and have them tell us about their jobs and past experiences. This was one of the better trips in a while. It was interesting to be right in the middle of the action in the middle of the day.

One thing that I found most interesting is that currency exchange markets are not regulated, other than regulations of individual banks, hedge funds and other institutions. It all makes sense of course. How can one entity regulate markets all over the world? Insider trading is allowed and very encouraged because that’s how the traders make money, so they all have a network of friends and colleagues from which they get tips about the market.

One trader also mentioned how such jobs are quickly getting replaced by complex algorithms, some proven to be unbeatable by humans. I guess it makes sense and it interests me a lot how a computer can get ‘inside information’ or a good tip from a ‘friend.’ Very interesting stuff. Apparently the currency exchange markets have had very low volatility since May of this year, making their job much harder. These traders live on volatility because of many more opportunity to make money (and lose of course).
We got some recommendations as to our career choices if we were to go into this specific field of trading currency, commodities, etc. and I found the whole talk to be very insightful. As to my own career, I never thought I’d go into trading, but it is very interesting to me, so who knows!

I also learned that I need to quickly go shopping for a nice coat I can wear over a suit. In 24 degree weather, wearing just a suit is just unreasonable.