AI Trading for the New World

A Financial Planner's Field Guide to Machines, Markets, and What Actually Works

Written from the perspective of a practicing financial planning professional.

A necessary word before page one

This book is educational. It is not financial advice, and it is not a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security, or to use any product named in these pages.

Everything here describes how artificial intelligence is being used in and around stock trading as of late 2026, based on publicly reported information. Company names, product features, and prices change. Some of the prices in this book were already moving between the research and the writing. Before you spend a dollar on any tool described here, check the vendor's current terms yourself.

I am not your financial adviser. Nothing here creates an adviser-client relationship. If you are considering any strategy in this book, talk to a qualified professional who owes you a fiduciary duty, someone legally required to put your interests first, and talk to a tax professional before you let anything trade in a taxable account.

The markets do not care how smart your software is. Keep that in mind on every page, and this book will have done its job.

How to read this book

This book has two halves that belong together.

Chapters 1 through 10 are the map. They cover every significant way AI is actually being used in stock trading and everything around it, from the quant funds that have run machine learning for thirty years, to the phone app that now offers to trade for you, to the surveillance systems watching the whole thing.

Chapters 11 through 16 are the compass. They cover what goes wrong, who gets hurt, what the regulators are doing about it, and how a disciplined investor evaluates any AI trading claim, including the tax bill nobody mentions in the marketing.

You can read the map without the compass, but you shouldn't. The people who get hurt by AI trading almost never get hurt by the technology. They get hurt by skipping the second half.