AI Driven Trading Surges 60% to 75% of Global Market Volume

The global financial landscape is undergoing a significant transformation, with autonomous agents—AI-driven programs capable of making and executing decisions—taking over tasks previously handled exclusively by human experts. This shift from human-centric to agent-driven finance is automating complex operations such as trading and portfolio management with unprecedented speed and precision, impacting both retail investors and large institutions.

Across major equity markets, algorithms now handle an estimated 60–75% of trading volumes, processing millions of data points and executing trades in milliseconds, far outpacing human capabilities. Retail investors are increasingly trusting their money with robo-advisors, with assets under management (AUM) soaring from roughly $200 billion in 2018 to over $1.1 trillion last year. Institutional investors, including banks and hedge funds, are also embracing autonomous AI for trade execution and risk management, with about 70% of the U.S. stock market’s daily trade volume being executed by AI-driven algorithms by the end of 2021.

Early adopters have reported improved efficiency and consistency, indicating that markets are becoming more agent-friendly, with human guidance only in specialized instances. This results in a more continuous and optimized deployment of capital, reducing friction from human limitations. Consequently, the gap between what an individual investor can achieve compared to a large firm is rapidly narrowing, leading to a more inclusive and efficient financial system.

The decentralized finance (DeFi) arena exemplifies this paradigm shift. Giza’s ARMA offering is a pioneering autonomous financial entity that optimizes stablecoin yields across different lending protocols, acting as a digital portfolio manager. Since its launch, ARMA has managed over $1.12 million in user assets and generated more than $6.6 million in transaction volume within the first few weeks. By May 16, ARMA had accrued a total operational volume of $32 million, gathered more than $3.1 million in assets under agent (AUA), and executed nearly 102,000 autonomous transactions.

ARMA’s success is attributed to its ability to execute trades and rebalance positions continuously, often hundreds of times a day. Internal backtesting by the Giza team showed that ARMA’s strategies outperformed any individual lending market by 83% over a four-month period. Importantly, ARMA operates in a non-custodial manner, ensuring users retain complete ownership of their assets while the agent is authorized to move funds within set parameters. This approach avoids errors or abuses, providing users with the benefits of automatic strategy execution while preserving full sovereignty over their assets.

Giza’s concept of “Xenocognitive Finance” aims to transcend human cognitive boundaries through agentic automation while keeping users in control. This paradigm absorbs complexity, providing an intelligent agent layer that preserves user autonomy. Giza is developing an SDK for others to build custom agents, hinting at an approaching Cambrian explosion of automated finance. As this sector evolves, Giza is positioning itself at the forefront, paving the way for an exciting future in digital finance.