Bloomberg Surveillance · Friday, August 7, 2026
Retail investors are increasingly using artificial intelligence to act as 'DIY hedge fund managers,' moving beyond simple stock recommendations to building complex trading models and generating calls. This marks a new chapter in retail trading, following the zero-commission era and meme stock phenomenon.
“So it's because of this that investors kind of take matters into their own hands. And Sajah, you've written a story about how artificial intelligence is helping retail investors become kind of DIY hedge fund managers. They're using this technology to build programs huge returns in the stock market because this is what they see as their path forward.”
“If you think about kind of the progression of retail trading, this is almost like zero commission two point zero, So five ten years ago when Robinhood kind of spearheaded this zero commission period, and then during the pandemic we saw like game stop and mean stock trading, and now it's almost the next chapter for retail trading, especially with artificial intelligence. These folks that we talked to, they don't just ask AI like what stocks to buy, They're asking them to help build code, build a model, very sophisticate a model to help them identify strategies and even generate trading calls.”