From the middle office to the frontlines of a high-speed equities trading desk at one of the largest Nordic asset managers by AUM, Edgar Castel, equity trader at Nordea Asset Management, speaks to Trader TV for the #GenerationTrader series about navigating this transition into a high-pressure front-office role. Castel discusses how trading desks are evolving at unprecedented speed, driven by advances in AI, automation, and changing market structure, including near 24-hour trading, shorter settlement cycles, and crypto-related innovation. And while these changes are happening fast, he warns that human intuition and trust in finance and trading have become ever more critical.
Full Interview
Josephine Gallagher – So, to begin with, talk us through your finance journey.
Edgar Castel – I started my career in 2019 at ABC Arbitrage in Paris, and my role consisted of being in charge of everything related to the middle office—breaks, settlement breaks, and cost breaks. And it was my first contact with the industry, and I was in charge of reconciliation of cash, reconciliation of position, and also talked a lot with brokers, prime brokers, and custodians to just find a solution to resolve all those kinds of breaks. Today, I’m currently an equity trader at Nordea Asset Management, and my job consists of trading some stocks on the equity markets. So we execute some trades. We try to get the best services for our PMs (portfolio managers). We take advantage of the liquidity in the markets. We take advantage of the momentum, the trading conditions, and the market conditions, and we give them some colour to have the better, the best service possible for them.
Josephine Gallagher – And how has starting out in the middle office actually shaped your skill set on the trading desk?
Edgar Castel – So the middle office was a very interesting point of entry, because when people talk about finance, they are mostly thinking about trading performance, P&L, charts, etc. And they don’t talk much about what happens after the trade is done, and what is the lifecycle of a trade, which is actually the hidden part, I think, in our job. So it was very educational to start in this way, because middle office jobs are very important to keep the trading smooth. They help the trader to avoid issues, keep an eye on the settlement, and deal with all the problems regarding fees and accounts. So they do a great job. But yeah, to be honest, I remember when I was in the middle office in 2019 and I walked the first time on the trading floor. I saw all those screens, etc. Traders were busy, and the phone rang, and it was a very particular atmosphere. And I think it was something familiar for me, so that’s why I just figured out that I will follow this way and work, take opportunities, and later I was just taking that step.
Josephine Gallagher – And given your multicultural and multi-regional background, how have those qualities supported your approach to trading and market analysis?
Edgar Castel – So as an equity trader, French equity trader here in Denmark, it’s a big plus for the team to be multicultural, because we work. We’ve met a lot of different players in finance. We cover all the regions in the world, and we work with a lot of different kinds of brokers everywhere in the club. So all the strategy, even the PM, are different. Some are more involved on the European markets, [some] are more involved in Asian markets, even in the Danish markets, more locally. So they have a lot of different strategies, and we all have different specificities. So it’s very important for the team to be very flexible and to be able measure to handle all the all the different aspects of the trading, especially regarding regulation, regarding market structure, etc. So it creates a lot of flexibility when the team, is multicultural, and a new view on the way that you deal the business, and for example, on my team, we have five traders, three expats, and two Danish.
Josephine Gallagher – Tell me a bit about your current desk setup at Nordea Asset Management. How do your traders and your quants and PMs (portfolio managers) all work together?
Edgar Castel – So we have all the necessary supplies here at Nordea Asset Management. We work closely with data engineers, our quant team to improve our technical skills. It’s a very big part of our job to have an existing view of what we do—create more accurate tools, TCA (transaction cost analysis) tools, tracking tools, which allow us to figure out very important metrics and prove the way that we work. And we are always open to improving our strategy and are always open to having a conversation, whether with PMs or quants. And for example, we were working closely with a PM and also a quant team, because the PM requires a specific instruction for their trades, and we are here just to create a specific algorithm for them in collaboration with brokers. Of course, after that, we need to back test, recover a lot of data, create a lot of resources for the quant team, and just evaluate the way that we set up the strategy
Josephine Gallagher – Understood. So, like many other buy sides, Nordea Asset Management is also exploring the use of AI. Could you tell me, like, where you’re seeing the most interesting use cases for emerging technologies like AI on the trading desk?
Edgar Castel – Trading-wise, the AI will have a massive impact, I think, in the industry, especially the way that we get the information very quickly. Some alerts on stocks, trading plans, and also it will be very interesting for us for everything related to program trading, because when you have a very large basket, and you are able to put it in the machine, and the machine will tell you how you can trade it, it can definitely save us a lot of time, and also maybe give us the best solution, because it’s always a big debate to how, how to handle a big basket, especially when you have some restriction between two legs, buy legs, or sell legs, or you have to hold back some correlated names, sector balance, or you are looking for some trading situation. I think the AI will be a very great tool for this kind of job, yes.
Josephine Gallagher – Is there a balancing act when it comes to using these kinds of AI tools? Are there limits to using it in trading?
Edgar Castel – Yes, I think there are limits in the industry with AI. The first, I suspect would be probably because the job is mostly human and will probably stay mostly human. There is a lot of human behaviour in the job and a lot of human interaction. And there is some aspect that AI cannot replicate, such as confidence, intuition, or even trust. So I think for those aspects, the human will always be very important in trading. But also I guess that, if the human will be too much, take too much consideration of AI in this job, the trading will be more and more passive, because if people follow just AI without critic view, everybody will probably have the same strategy, will run the same trade, even the PM will probably have the same market colour or the same trends. So the strategy will be more and more passive, and at the end, it would be maybe unproductive for the trading. But nevertheless, I think in each case, the AI will have a very huge impact on our industry.
Josephine Gallagher – And just finally, to wrap things up, tell us what kind of advice you would offer an entry-level trader or someone even interested in entering the world of trading?
Edgar Castel – So the trading is a fast-paced environment. So for a new one, a new person who wants to join those kinds of jobs, they have to work hard and stay very open to the new possibility to the new trend, etc, because it’s really related to the new technology also. The trading today is not the same as 20 years ago, and it will not be the same in 10 years. And also to be very consistent, work a lot, because everything is fast-paced. And even the evolution of hour trading, it’s changed a lot by some regulation, 24-hour trading, or even the settlement, T+1, or it may be in the future, T+0 so maybe everything related to crypto, etc, will be involved in our job. So I will say for a new joiner to be very open-minded to all those kinds of technology.
Josephine Gallagher – Excellent. Thank you very much, Edgar, for joining us.
