The Future Of Wall Street Could Be AI Agents Trading Around The Clock. Human Investors May Only Set The Rules

A new wave of artificial intelligence-powered agents is being developed to execute investment strategies with little day to day human involvement, signaling what many on Wall Street believe could be the next major transformation in financial services.

The concept, known as agentic trading, envisions investors providing an AI assistant with financial goals, then allowing the technology to manage investments continuously. Unlike today's chatbots, these AI agents are designed to take action rather than simply answer questions.

"Effectively everybody has their own family office that is working 24/7 for them while they're awake or sleeping," Devin Ryan, head of financial technology research at Citizens, told CNBC. "This isn't 10 years away. This is coming in the next few years."

Ryan believes the technology will eventually extend far beyond stock trading. Future AI agents could continuously optimize taxes, manage cash balances, monitor mortgages, oversee borrowing and rebalance investment portfolios automatically based on an individual's financial objectives.

While fully autonomous investing remains under development, financial firms are already racing to build the infrastructure that could make it possible. Rather than handing complete control to artificial intelligence, many companies are introducing AI in stages.

Startup Podium Markets AI has developed an assistant called Ivy that reviews a customer's investments across multiple brokerage accounts and suggests trades based on personalized goals and risk preferences. However, the platform still requires users to approve every recommendation before executing a transaction.

"The AI informs, but the human decides," Podium Markets AI co founder and CEO Dirk Mueller-Ingrand told CNBC. "The average investor still should be very much in charge of the final decision. ... We're going down the path of a persistent AI finance or trading buddy who's always with you."

Major brokerage firms are pursuing similar strategies. Robinhood recently launched tools allowing third party AI agents to connect directly with customer accounts, while brokerage platform Public is building proprietary AI agents capable of automating investing workflows inside its ecosystem.

"What this era of agentic is doing ... it goes away from just being able to research something by yourself and then make up your own ideas and then trade the way you've traded where it's now becoming automated and where AI agents can actually execute investment strategies on your behalf," Public co founder and co CEO Leif Abraham told CNBC.

Ryan estimates that widespread adoption of agentic finance could dramatically increase trading activity. An investor who currently places two trades per month could eventually see an AI system execute 20 trades in a single day as market conditions evolve.

"By the end of next year, we think that on some of these platforms, the majority of transaction activity by number of trades will be done by agents, if you can believe that," Ryan said.

Retail investors have already been experimenting with artificial intelligence since ChatGPT's launch in late 2022. Many use OpenAI's ChatGPT or Anthropic's Claude to summarize earnings reports, identify investment opportunities or analyze companies.

Some investors report positive experiences using AI strictly as a research assistant.
Obioha Okereke, founder of financial literacy platform College Money Habits, built an AI agent using Claude to search for undervalued stocks and options opportunities.

Even so, he said every recommendation still undergoes human review before any money is invested. "I will always stand by AI being a tool as opposed to a replacement," Okereke told CNBC.

Others have found the technology less reliable when allowed to operate independently.
Thomas Schlossmacher, founder of AI company Specialty Tokens, said he experimented with automated trading agents after seeing claims they could consistently identify profitable market patterns.

Instead, he told CNBC, "I was just losing money consistently. I think if you're using it for an automated system or relying on an agent to do it for you, you probably want a professional," Schlossmacher added. "To blindly give an agent and say, 'Hey, make me money,' I think is kind of dumb."

Those mixed experiences show the challenge of ensuring AI understands an investor's true intentions. A request to "grow my portfolio aggressively," for example, could mean different things depending on the investor.

It might involve taking on more volatility, concentrating investments, using options or accepting larger potential losses. Companies developing these systems say preventing unintended outcomes is becoming just as important as building the technology itself.

Public requires customers to review and approve every AI generated workflow before execution. "You still have the last word," Abraham said. "The AI agent will not have its own mind. ... It will only execute."

Ryan echoed that view, saying firms must ensure automated systems consistently prioritize clients' best interests. "You have to make sure that the customer's best interests are at the forefront," he told CNBC. "If the agent is not behaving as modeled or as you expect, that becomes a risk for the firm."