What we tell trading desks about AI in 2026

Every quarter a desk asks us to build them a model that predicts the market. That is the wrong place to start. The reliable edge is speed and coverage. A filing drops, a call happens, a story breaks, and the question is how fast your team knows what it means for their positions.

So we build reading software first. It watches the sources the desk already trusts, pulls out what changed, and flags the handful of items that matter for their book. Analysis that took forty minutes now takes seconds, and nothing important gets missed because someone was in a meeting.

Forecasting comes after that, and always with a confidence range attached. A number with no sense of how sure it is does more harm than good on a desk. Honesty about uncertainty is part of the product.