I knew a bunch of them. Most of them moved on: retired or started over in new careers. It hit them hard. Maybe not so hard because trading was a lucrative career, but most of us don't have that kind of dough to fall back on.

+1 this. Saw it first hand, it was ugly. Post-9/11 stress and ‘08 cleared out a lot of others. Interestingly, I’ve seen some of them surface in crypto.

To answer what I saw, some blend of this:

- post-9/11 stress and ‘08 was a big jolt, and pushed a lot of folks out.

- Managed their money fine (or not) for when the job slowed down and also when ‘08 hit

- “traders” became “salespeople” or otherwise managing relationships

- Saw the trend, leaned into it hard, you now have Citadel, Virtu, JS, and so on.

- Saw the trend, specialized or were already in assets hard to automate.

- Senior enough to either steer the algo farms + jr traders, or become an algo steerer themselves

- Not senior enough, not rich enough, not flexible enough or not interested anymore and now drive Uber, mobile dog washers, joined law enforcement (3x example I know of).