Yo Pit Crazies,
The CEO of Anthropic dialed back some comments he made this week saying his tech will put everyone out of work and crater businesses.
Apparently he forgot that someone needs to buy things that Anthropic supposedly is helping companies make easier.
Do I still give my tax returns to an accountant? Probably yes.
The reality is no one knows how this will all turn out. Productivity gains generally help grow things.
I will give an answer from very personal experience.
I started on an options floor in 1989. Back then, the exchanges could barely handle the quote traffic.
Most trading was done on paper in open outcry. I managed around 14 stocks when I got my first seat in 1991, and the P-Coast did 100,000 contracts on a good day.
Apple (AAPL) trades five times that volume on one strike today.
Ten years in, I was running an electronic book of 140 stocks and exchange quote traffic had gone up 100-fold. By the time I retired, only a small group of firms made option markets instead of the thousands of independent traders who once filled the floor.
Five years after that, the entire floor system was essentially over. The traders, the staff, the entry-level jobs, all of it vanished.
Option volume today is 52 million contracts a day. When I started, maybe four million. None of that growth happens without the tech changes that came, and the customer experience is way better than $25 per trade commissions.
What has stayed the same? Investor greed and fear, volatility, and markets in general.
No one knows how AI will play out, but traders can learn how volatility works and see how the market thinks it will play out. The higher lows for the VIX are still with us even with the big selloff Tuesday. Until I see us touch 16 VIX, things will stay choppy on this AI rant.
6 month VIX chart
The Tyranny of Red Tape
The tyranny of bureaucracy is strangling the US economy.
Regulations, government bloat, and fraud are sapping our tax dollars away. Congress can actually fix this.
Will they?
Rolling back the Endangerment Finding for the EPA was a start. Now let us get to Medicare fraud, shall we.
To Your Trading Success,
AG