While trading volumes and profits are soaring, trading jobs appear to be few and far between.
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There’s always been a tech war within the trading industry. Our firm prioritizes human insight over algorithms, meaning all the trading decisions are made by humans.
So, while we need cutting-edge software to get our data, we’ve never played the same game as the high-frequency traders, some of whom route purpose-built fiber-optic cables through mountains so that they can execute trades microseconds ahead of their competitors.
All of this is chronicled in Michael Lewis’ famous book Flash Boys. The race for better software, more data, and faster processing power is nothing new.
However, the current battle for faster chips, smarter AI, and greater data storage is taking on a new geopolitical dimension – which raises some unexpected questions and also makes one wonder whether the HFT sphere is at risk of forgetting the human element that makes markets tick.
Take XTX Markets, for example. The London-based quant firm recently announced a €1 billion investment to build five data centers in Finland to underpin its growing use of machine learning. By building its own infrastructure instead of outsourcing, XTX is betting big that it can generate more computing power with its own infrastructure and get better returns in the process.
This leads squarely into the debate about so-called ‘digital sovereignty,’ the question of who owns what data, which is one of the big issues animating the tech war between the United States and China.
Data and Digital Sovereignty
In this context, it’s easy to see that the trading industry represents a pretty interesting case study.
Think about it. XTX’s Finnish data centers will house thousands of graphics processing units (GPUs) to train AI models, relying on data from millions of daily trades worldwide. If data is the new oil of the trading industry, HFT firms are the refineries, turning raw information into profits. But who owns this data? Or rather, who should? The trading firms? The countries hosting their servers? The cloud providers? Real traders making bids and offers? Or the people and companies the data comes from?
If this data is so valuable, we should ask where it comes from, where it resides, and who it really belongs to.
The truth is that the data doesn’t come out of thin air—it is not rained down from the clouds in which it is stored—it comes from real people making bids and offers on securities that represent economic value produced by real people. However, algorithmic trading obscures this fact. The arrival of AI in trading represents the next step in the rise of machines, but it also increases the sidelining of actual traders.
Firms like XTX and Jane Street are making enormous investments in data processing and artificial intelligence, but human capital, including human insight and human experience, is seemingly an afterthought. XTX, for example, has zero human traders; everything is automated. Their new data center will host 22.5 megawatts of power and include a 50-person office space – but none of the staff will be traders.
Similarly, Jane Street, whose algorithms have driven its revenue to staggering heights, recently announced plans to open a big new office in London. But few people working there will make trading decisions – that is left to the algorithms.
While trading volumes and profits are soaring, trading jobs appear to be few and far between. This disconnect between market growth and employment should be a red flag for the industry’s future.
The Dark Side of Dark Pools
Another consequence of the tech-driven trading boom is the rise of off-exchange trading. According to Bloomberg, in January 2025, for the first time ever, over half of U.S. stock trades happened off-exchange, with 51.8% taking place in ‘dark pools’, a type of alternative trading system (ATS), or through internalization by firms like Citadel Securities and Virtu Financial. This raises serious questions about transparency and price discovery.
If trading is increasingly done in secret by a handful of firms, how can we trust that prices are fair? Think of it like an auction. When an auction house like Christie’s is selling its most valuable assets, it will want as many bidders as possible in the room to get the best possible price. But in trading, we’re moving in the opposite direction, with prices increasingly set by a small, powerful group.
In fact, the dark pools are getting even darker as more trading takes place in venues literally called ‘private rooms.’ These are restricted platforms that build on the main advantage of dark pools — concealing large equity transactions to avoid affecting market prices — while adding a layer of exclusivity by strictly defining who is allowed to participate in each trade.
This helps big institutions control the terms of engagement —like hiring a mall for the day to shop privately. Of course, the effect is that the trading landscape as a whole becomes less transparent, which ultimately hurts price discovery—the process by which the real value of an asset is set by demand and supply.
A Call for Balance
Together, these trends mean that trading is becoming more homogenized and less transparent. The tech war in trading isn’t just about market share, it’s about the soul of the industry.
As HFT firms compete to build the best AI and the biggest data centers, and as more public equity trading gets pushed off public exchanges, the industry risks losing sight of the human element that makes markets meaningful.
Trading, at its core, is about real people creating real value through real companies. That’s a truth that we can’t afford to forget.
This is the philosophy behind our Real Trading platform, which gives aspiring traders the chance to become professionals. Today, we have a network of over 3,000 traders across 90 countries, executing more than $3 billion in daily trades.
But we can’t do it alone. Big trading firms should also invest in creating opportunities for real traders through training programs, entrepreneurship support, or financial literacy initiatives. By doing so, the industry can ensure that the benefits of market growth are shared more broadly rather than being dominated by a few tech-driven giants.
By definition, trading is about making profits, and we’re no exception. However, the success of the industry as a whole can’t be measured only in profits but also in its ability to grow the pie for the benefit of more people.
That means investing in real people, not just machines, and ensuring that the rewards of technological progress mean more jobs for traders. After all, trading isn’t just about algorithms and data; it’s about the people and companies driving the markets forward.
