What are some of the signs your desk might downsize/close down

I'm on an OTC trading desk for a niche product that is barely seeing any flow. We have on a small prop position, but the firm is highly systematic is is more-so interested in focusing on our market making efforts than letting traders put on prop risk. Given the current environment I'm sure a few other teams might have some questions similar to this as well.

Everything we're doing in the US could easily be handled by the Asia and European team and the US office is already kind of ignored due to some regulatory concerns although we still are actively trading with our US counterparties. We recently had some downsizing in the overall company for some of the support roles and one of the junior traders in a foreign office was cut.

My team has about 12 people globally and given how much activity and flow we see instead of having 4 people in each region I feel like we could easily have 2 or close down the US desk.

What are some tell-tale signs either your desk is about to get let go or team might downsize even further than company-wide layoffs, and what do you do as a junior in this situation? I've been actively reaching out to competitors to make introductions and say hello. If my team gets laid off I'd probably be competing against a couple of my current desk colleagues for a new role.

 

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