They are not not traders. These are a bunch of PhDs who priced out derivatives, mortgage back securities and other "exotics" and the sales people who pushed these packages to other institutions.
I don't necessarily consider that "devastating". A combination of market climate or conditions, efficiencies, technologies, etc etc are all factors. The only constant in the marketplace is change. But it will never go away, that's the important thing. there's always money to be made for traders.
I know a case were somebody put on his "businessscard" and in his emails: financial advisor. In reality he was an office boy running around with papers. When they found out his self declared status he had to change it immediatelly.
Mtrader: haha Which reminds me. I interned at a stock brokerage many years ago, and the first week I was there, the CEO send a memo to all 150 brokers: Please stop printing your own businesscards that say Managing Director or Vice President, it should read registered representative. lol
This was all the people in the front office of ubs sales and trading division. It was traders, sales traders, structures, prop traders, market makers, everyone. The original idea was to put all the asset classes on one floor so that they communicate more freely with each other. A credit derivs guy can just walk over to the equities guy to ask why a stock was selling off. It was also set up to prevent senior guys (who lived in Greenwich) from leaving for hedge funds as they got tired of the commute. The experiment failed and the firm has moved the floor back to nyc. I've been to that floor. It's amazing. A thousand people and its pindrop quiet. They used all sorts of sound management techniques otherwise it would be like a football stadium with that many people trying to communicate markets to each other.