Weaving market narratives as a coping strategy: How foreign exchange traders adapt to automation in financial markets

As financial markets become increasingly automated, the role of human traders faces existential challenges. This study examines how foreign exchange (FX) traders adapt to the rise of algorithmic trading by engaging in narrative construction, a form of cognitive and cultural coping. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a high-volume FX dealing room, we show how traders “weave” market narratives to preserve professional agency, relevance, and expertise. These narratives serve as flexible interpretive tools that mediate the overwhelming influx of data and algorithmic decisions, enabling traders to define meaning, manage uncertainty, and maintain occupational identity. We argue that narrative weaving is not merely symbolic but a critical human strategy to co-exist with non-transparent, high-speed technologies. Our findings contribute to debates on the societal implications of automation by revealing how professionals adapt not only through upskilling but also through reasserting interpretive and relational capacities that resist full automation. The study advances our understanding of human-machine interaction in technologically mediated work, with implications for algorithmic governance and the future of expertise.