Not a good time to be a trader

There is yet another technology-driven disruption brewing - this time in the realm of stock trading. The shift towards "algorithmic trading" is accelerating - in fact, according to this Reuters article, "About a third of U.S. equities trading is already being done using algorithmic trading, with that figure expected to soar to more than 50 percent by 2010..." Which may be an underestimation. Apparently an IBM study from 2006 estimated a tenfold reduction in the ranks of traders, as in, for every 10 traders today there will be 1 by 2015.

While it is inevitable that disruption hurts someone, it is also true that someone will benefit -- in this case I believe the benefits will come eventually in an Internet-style disintermediation of financial markets. After all, if one can execute strategies through a piece of software, it should be trivial to provide access to that software to whoever wants to use it, right?