From boardrooms to trading floors, there’s no escaping the artificial intelligence conversation. How will it affect business and finance? What will it actually do to the experience of investing?
Well, it just might make it a little more exciting.
While some fear that relying on AI agents to make decisions for them will take away from the thrill of investing, others argue the technology will not only make trading faster, sharper and more competitive than ever, but also, more fun.
If we look at the younger generation today, they operate as a group. The culture of social media has taught them to share and discuss thoughts and ideas as a community. AI is going to add agents to that already active community. The only difference is that those agents will be able to operate on your behalf, 24/7.
Picture this: you’ll be able to sit on a beach and have your agent – who knows you inside out: your personality, what you’re interested in, what works and what doesn’t work – and be able to trade and invest for you.
But you’ll still have influence through that process, because the agent still has to represent you.
Even today, the amount of data I can pull together using an AI agent when I want to make a personal investment is remarkable. It would normally take me hours to gather that information. With AI, I can pull it together in a second, get to a conclusion, make a decision and execute a trade.
AI allows you to see pattern recognition and signals that you simply cannot identify on your own. The agent can pull those things together very quickly and help you take advantage of opportunities before someone else does. That’s what gives you an edge.
Now, people might argue that if everyone has access to AI technology, then the edge disappears.
But I’ve been hearing that argument for 40 years.
When you’re dealing with global investing, you’re not talking about five stocks. If there were only five or ten stocks in the world, then maybe you could argue that there’s no edge.
But there are thousands.
If you look at the US market, there are roughly 3,500 stocks that we would call broadly investable and liquid. There are actually more than that (closer to 12,000) but around 3,500 that most people could realistically trade.
Out of those 3,500, maybe 100 get most of the attention.
The rest are sitting there.
Not because they aren’t interesting or promising, but because people don’t have the time to look at them, don’t understand them, or simply don’t have the resources.
That’s where opportunity comes from.
A company might be doing wonderful things, but if not enough people are aware of it, the stock goes nowhere. AI changes that. It can find those opportunities and bring awareness to them across a much broader set of securities, asset classes and patterns appearing in the market.
If you can pull all that together, you’re going to find more opportunities and more edge; opportunities that other people are also discovering, which then drives the price.
And today, more people than ever have access to investing.
You can invest with one dollar. You can take very small positions if you want. But if a million people all see the same opportunity and each invest a small amount, suddenly that becomes something that moves a market.
At the same time, we’re seeing a generational shift in how people think about investing.
Some people worry that younger investors rely too much on technology and may struggle with critical thinking. I actually see the opposite.
The younger generation is more curious than ever. They want to learn and they want to know how to do it themselves.
They’re not looking to rely entirely on an advisor sitting somewhere managing their money, the way previous generations might have done. Their parents or grandparents might simply hand their money to an advisor and let them buy investments on their behalf.
Younger investors want to participate.
I like to use the term “investment tourism.”
Younger investors are exploring. One day they might look at one opportunity, the next day something different. Maybe they hold some investments forever, maybe they don’t.
It’s very different from the old “buy and hold” mentality.
And while buy-and-hold can absolutely build wealth, the reality is that markets move faster today.
Capitalism itself moves faster.
One thing people don’t always appreciate about a capitalist system is that it’s a great destroyer of wealth. Companies that stop innovating eventually disappear. They get replaced by companies that move faster or think differently.
Look at the companies people invest in today. Many of them didn’t exist 30 years ago. Some didn’t exist 20 years ago. A few didn’t even exist five years ago.
The cycle of innovation is accelerating.
The younger generation sees this. They recognize they need to move quickly and adapt. They want to understand investing themselves, and they take pride in that knowledge. They’re not saying, “Do it all for me.” They’re saying, “You can help me, but I want to know how to do this too.”
Now, when we talk about the GCC, I wouldn’t say there’s a unique “type” of investor here. At the end of the day, investors in the GCC often understand this better than most. The region has always been outward looking when it comes to markets and opportunities.
For example, in the US, many investors tend to focus almost entirely on domestic companies. If it doesn’t happen in the US, they often don’t look at it. At the same time, historically it has been expensive and complicated to invest internationally. Years ago, trading certain foreign stocks could cost $50 or $60 per trade.
If I told that to investors in the GCC today, they’d say that’s unbelievable. What investors here are looking for is access to world markets at low price points. That’s where the industry needs to evolve.
As a firm, our job is to deliver what investors are looking for. We need to meet customers where they are rather than forcing them to operate the way we want them to.
That’s another big shift happening in financial markets today. The customer is more powerful than ever, and our role is to enable them.
Finally, there’s the question of market fragmentation and cross-border investing. A lot of that will depend on governments and the policies they choose to implement.
About 15 years ago, there was a strong trend toward opening financial markets and making cross-border investment easier. Then, around 10 years ago, many countries began closing their borders and making it harder to do cross-border business.
Now we’re seeing the opposite again.
People are realizing that maybe closing markets wasn’t the best idea. The GCC, interestingly, has largely stayed open.
The region has long allowed investors to access opportunities globally, and in many ways it’s ahead of the curve. Some other markets, including the US, can still be quite difficult when it comes to cross-border investing.
If you live outside the US and want to invest there, you may face additional barriers. And if US investors want to invest internationally, many firms still don’t provide the infrastructure needed to trade efficiently outside the country.
That’s one of the areas we’re working on — helping expand global access so investors everywhere can participate more easily in markets around the world.
Because ultimately, that’s what investing is about: participating in where wealth is created, wherever that may be.
And in the future, AI agents may play a big role in helping investors find those opportunities faster — and more exciting — than ever before.
