Trading floor bonanza cue for market downturn?

Estate agents and trading technology suppliers in New York and London are preparing for a business bonanza as bulge bracket investment banks scope for sites to build a new generation of trading floors. 

Bloomberg reports from Manhattan on efforts by JPMorgan, Lehman, Merrill and Goldman Sachs to acquire sites capable of meeting the hi-tech, hi-visibility requirements of the modern dealing room. Similar moves are afoot in London, where Canary Wharf is about to embark on its first speculative development in years as it bids to seduce more business away from an increasingly high rise City. The prize scalp here is JPMorgan, which will soon decide where to locate its new 1m square foot European headquarters. 

The move to cross asset trading means that investment banks are now looking to house all of their cash, fixed income and commodities traders on the one floor. Desktop technology shrinkage also makes it possible to cram twice as many desks into the equivalent floor space of  a decade ago.  

The record for the largest dealing room floor belongs to UBS and its Stamford, Connecticut site which accommodates 1400 people on  a single-level floor-space measuring 103,000 square foot. Expanded in 2002 just as the dot-com bubble was bursting, the UBS floor at the time seemed an enormous white elephant, a testament to the madness of the markets.

The current search for new space comes at the top of a long bull run, underpinned by cheap debt. Common sense is in short supply, and hubris is at an all-time high. Is history about to repeat itself?