I have been studying Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Capital Markets for ten months now and I am shocked everyday by the speed of evolution of this technology. When I started researching this last year I was looking for the Holy Grail trading tools and could not find them, hence I settled for other parts of the trade lifecycle where AI solutions already existed.

Yesterday, as I was preparing for a speech on AI at a conference, one of my colleagues in Tokyo forwarded me an Asian newswire mentioning that Nomura securities, after two years of research, would be launching an AI enabled HFT equity tool for its brokerage institutional clients in May - here it is: the Holy Grail exists, and not only at Nomura. Other brokers have been shyly speaking about their customizable smart brokerage, e.g. how to use technology so that tier5 clients feel they are being served like a tier1. Some IBs are working on that, they just don't publicly talk about it.

Talking to Eurekahedge last week I realized that they are tracking 15 funds that use AI in their strategy, I would argue there are even more than that because none of those were based in Japan (or Korea where apparently Fintech is exploding as we speak).

All this to reiterate that AI is an exponential technology, ten months ago there were no HFT trading solutions using AI, and we thought they were a few years away but no, here they are NOW. And the same with sentiment analysis, ten months ago they were just a marketing tool, now they are working on millions of documents every day at GSAM. Did I forget to mention smart TCA that's coming to an EMS near you soon?

Stay tuned for more in my upcoming buy side AI tools report.