Goldman Sachs Plans To Automate Trading By Hiring 100 Coders

Per a Bloomberg article, The Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE:GS) is planning to hire about 100 engineers in tech-related roles in the trading division to keep pace with competitors and meet demands for automation. The new positions will mainly be created in New York or London.

With technological advancements, the way of conducting trading business has changed. In place of traders managing buyers and sellers of stocks and bonds in person, electronic platforms have taken over.

Lesser trading time and ability to respond to larger number of requests are the key reasons why companies are investing in the digital platforms. Also, these will help generate more trades and thereby more revenues.

“You are going to see us very actively in the marketplace going after this kind of talent,” said Adam Korn, Goldman's co-head of engineering n the trading division. He further added, “Historically, engineers were not seen as a part of the business. That’s obviously changed.”

Also, with this hiring, Goldman plans to better develop its trading and risk-management platform — Marquee — in order to cater needs of large quant hedge funds.

Goldman has been focused on digitizing operations for quite some time. In 2016, it had launched online bank — Marcus by Goldman — which has been delivering promising results. While it is on track to remodel its business into a more profitable organization, it continues to face several legal investigations, which are likely to keep costs elevated.

The Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock has rallied 1% over the past six months against 10.8% decline of the industry it belongs to.

A few better-ranked stocks from the finance space are Federated Investors, Inc. (NYSE:FII) , Artisan Partners Asset Management Inc. (NYSE:APAM) and KKR & Co. Inc. (NYSE:KKR) . All these stocks currently carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Over the past 30 days, Federated has witnessed 1.6% upward earnings estimate revision for the current year. Its shares have gained 10.9% in the past six months.

Artisan Partners’ earnings estimates for 2019 have been revised slightly upward over the past 30 days. Shares of the company have gained 2.8% in the past six months.

KKR & Co earnings estimates for the current year have been revised 2.4% upward over the past 30 days. Shares of the company have gained 12.8% in the past six months.

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