Citi has been playing around with Microsoft's HoloLens holographic headset, building a virtual workstation that lets traders view data as 3D images.
Developed with virtual reality design studio 8ninths, the Holographic Workstation prototype uses Microsoft HoloLens to help better show and understand the huge amounts of data that traders deal with on old-fashioned flat screens.
Traders wear the HoloLens and see a three-tiered system of dynamically updated and interactive information. Ambient, high-level market conditions are represented in holographic spheres hovering at the top of the workstation like a cloudscape or weather system.
Traders use hand gestures and voice to drill further into market segments and filter financial instruments to trade in the middle tier.
The lowest tier comprises the ‘Holographic Stage’ where the trader can view historical and real-time performance before executing a trade as well as remotely collaborating with others at room-scale.
Stuart Riley, global head of technology for markets and securities services at Citi says that the bank's Tel Aviv markets lab - which worked on the project with 8ninths - sees "great potential for this technology to enhance and humanise the next-generation markets trading working environment".