Trading room

A trading room gathers traders operating on financial markets. The trading room is also often called the front office. The terms "dealing room" and "trading floor" are also used, the latter being inspired from that of an open outcry stock exchange. As open outcry is gradually replaced by electronic trading, the trading room becomes the only remaining place that is emblematic of the financial market. It is also the likeliest place within the financial institution where the most recent technologies are implemented before being disseminated in its other businesses. Specialized computer labs that simulate trading rooms are known as "trading labs" or "finance labs" in universities and business schools. Before the sixties or seventies, the banks' capital market businesses were mostly split into many departments, sometimes scattered at several sites, as market segments: money market (domestic and currencies), foreign exchange, long-term financing, exchange, bond market. By gathering these teams to a single site, banks want to ease: a more efficient broadcast of market information, for greater reactivity of traders; idea confrontation on market trends and opportunities; desk co-ordination towards customers. The Trading Rooms first appeared among United States bulge bracket brokers, such as Morgan Stanley, from 1971, with the creation of NASDAQ, which requires an equity trading desk on their premises, and the growth of the secondary market of federal debt products, which requires a bond trading desk. The spread of trading rooms in Europe, between 1982 and 1987, has been subsequently fostered by two reforms of the financial markets organization, that were carried out roughly simultaneously in the United Kingdom and France. In the United Kingdom, the Big Bang on the London Stock Exchange, removed the distinction between stockbrokers and stockjobbers, and prompted US investment banks, hitherto deprived of access to the LSE, to set up a trading room in the City of London.