JPMorgan to cut costs and jobs by ditching trading platforms

Hmm, be interesting to find out which trading systems they've decided to standardise on? Since they singled out foriegn exchange, and Thomson Reuters is known for offering tempting enterprise-wide licenses, not to mention practically inventing conversational dealing for the FX market... I wonder who the lucky provider is? 

Think this is to reduce the internal legacy trading platforms that they have from the various mergers going back to Chase times and the re-entry and reconciliation issues.  Not clear what asset classes are involved, getting to 2 sounds a little optimistic if its all.

Don't think this affects the external trading platforms they use directly.

That's correct Brian.

I guess this is great for JPMorgan but there's 3000 additional unemployed as a consequence. It's somewhat heartwarming to consider that in spite of all the automation and trading algorithms there is still work out there for traders even it is nothing but entering trades.

I understand that that IBM's Watson, after becoming a chess master, with a few improvements and bug fixes will become a Jeopardy master and following that will become a master trader.

Able to write its own algorithms, enter its own trades, trade on its own behalf, manage its own risk, regulate itself and even conduct insider trading and create recessions and unemployment with no human intervention.

Actually, as it turns out the plan is for 2, one for Equities which is already in place, and another called Athena which is an inhouse build using python and a number of other technologies covering all other asset classes.  Sounds pretty aggressive and somewhat optimistic to have a single solution capable of dealing with high volume businesses as well as the highly structured stuff. Still if successful they will have a cross-asset risk management capability which is a growing necessity, as well as wringing the efficiencies of common processes.  Of course the article doesn't tell us how much it is costing to save $300mm a year.  My experience indicates no one ever really goes back to check the saves, and that major, multi-year strategies like this (if they don't get derailed by budget cuts, missed deadlines, changing priorities or another merger) never actually kill off all the systems that they were supposed to displace leading to an increase in costs - maybe thats why no one goes back to check.

Sorry, it does say its costing $500mm - if you believe that.