I was at FIA Boca last week. Google was there in force to sell their hosting. They mentioned AI in their presentation, but there panels were an unclear advertisement that demonstrated how little they know about capital markets.

The exchange leaders panel was my favorite. Deutche Bourse, CME, CBOE and oddly Nasdaq. What seemed certain? Power trading is going to continue to to grow rapidly. A few years ago, they would have said they aren’t going after retail. Now Jeff Sprecher talks about the Robin Hood effect.

Tomczk, the CBOE chair, was most earnest in his statements about the Russian/Ukraine war and its long term impact on Europe. His perspective is it reflects a long term change where you have an evil dictatorship that is the largest country geographically on earth, killing people in droves daily and taking over cities less in another country less than two hours away from the CBOE offices. He wants Americans to at least try to understand the impact of that on European economies and need to change how they defend themselves in the future.

The most ambiguous in future thinking among the four leaders was AI. They were either silent or parroting that AI allows you to analyze more data and faster, which isn’t always an advantage, to stating they don’t know. I am in the camp that until we understand what AI will allow us to do that we have never done, we aren’t on the proper edge of its innovative power.