You have probably used ChatGPT or a similar tool to brainstorm stock ideas. That is the old version of AI - the one that helps you think but does not act.
The new version does both.
Financial companies, new ventures, and individual traders are creating AI systems that can monitor an investment portfolio and carry out transactions without human input. This is called agentic finance, and it goes a step further than the chatbots that have been around since ChatGPT launched in late 2022. Instead of just giving a recommendation, these agents carry it out.
Citizens' fintech research lead Devin Ryan puts it simply. "Effectively everybody has their own family office that is working 24/7 for them while they're awake or sleeping," he says. Ryan believes the shift is coming fast. "This isn't 10 years away. This is coming in the next few years."
Agentic finance represents a significant evolution from the robo-advisors of the past decade. While robo-advisors primarily offered automated portfolio rebalancing based on predefined risk profiles, these new AI agents use large language models and real-time data to generate and execute more dynamic strategies, from options trading to sector rotation. The key difference is the ability to reason and adapt without human intervention, though that autonomy also introduces new risks.
A typical retail investor today makes roughly two trades per month. That could become 20 trades a day.
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Leif Abraham, co-founder and co-CEO of the brokerage Public, explains the change. "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."
It is not just big firms. Individual investors are building their own trading bots.
Obioha Okereke, a 29-year-old technology consultant and founder of a financial literacy platform, built an AI agent that leveraged Claude to identify undervalued stocks and options. "It was essentially just asking Claude to act as a hedge fund analyst to find undervalued stocks," he says. However, he checked every recommendation manually before executing any trade. "I will always stand by AI being a tool as opposed to a replacement."
Thomas Schlossmacher, 31, a retail investor and founder of an AI systems company, tested a trading agent and lost money consistently. His warning is blunt. "To blindly give an agent and say, 'Hey, make me money,' I think is kind of dumb." He adds that if you are relying on an automated system, you probably want a professional running it.
These stories highlight the central challenge. The machine can trade your money into a hole while you sleep if the AI misinterprets your goals and risk tolerance.
The industry is not rushing headlong into full automation. Most firms are taking a gradual approach, building AI tools that recommend actions but still require a human to say yes.
Podium Markets AI's co-founder and CEO Dirk Mueller-Ingrand summarizes the philosophy. "The AI informs, but the human decides." His startup's assistant analyzes portfolios and gives recommendations but does not trade on its own. He describes the ideal as "a persistent AI finance or trading buddy who's always with you."
Public's Abraham echoes that. "You still have the last word. The AI agent will not have its own mind. It will only execute."
Ryan from Citizens points out the risk: "You have to make sure that the customer's best interests are at the forefront. If the agent is not behaving as modeled or as you expect, that becomes a risk for the firm."
For your own money, the takeaway is straightforward. AI agents are coming to a broker near you, possibly by the end of 2027. They will make trading faster and more frequent.
But the human element - your judgment, your goals, your gut check - is not going away anytime soon. The smart move is to understand what the agent is doing before you let it loose on your portfolio.
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