I think that a total repeal is probably not realistic, but pieces of it may be pulled back. Seems that Trump is planning to kill it off. Methinks this the cause of the recent financial pop. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/histo...epeal-dodd-frank-any-time-soon-160448013.html http://finance.yahoo.com/news/yelle...ds-of-another-financial-crisis-162821221.html
Dodd-Frank forced banks out of speculative activities such as trading. I feel that there will be more opportunity if Dodd-Frank is relaxed IMHO.
So if Goldman goes back into prop trading that's better for retail traders? Intuitively I'd think the opposite, but I suppose it could go either way depending on your opinion of your own skills and resources vis-à-vis Goldman. In any event the banks were leaving prop trading anyway because of the volatile nature of the returns, so repealing Dodd-Frank most probably won't lead to any of them starting prop trading back up in anything but a limited way, which they're kind of already doing now anyway taking some limited exposure on imperfect hedges of products they're selling. I don't think any of them are pushing for repeal of the Volcker Rule, it's the rest of it they don't like.
I agree that it won't get appealed, but much better than Hillary's idea of adding taxes to financial trades, at least this is what I heard.
Banks were never leaving prop trading. It was growing - it was just hidden: a flow desk would have a prop trader sitting at the end. While prop trading is volatile, the returns are higher so banks used it to prop (like the pun ) up their ROE's. The "hidden" prop is still alive and well. If I were a bank and I had to kill one provision the Volcker rule would be the last. Explicit prop trading was only a few hundred million in revenues at even the biggest firms. That's why no bank fought it. It was a public lightning rod while they could negotiate on real issues like TIER 1 capital requirements.