Tomorrow I’ll be leading Junior Trader’s first American university finance tour of London so I have been swatting up using AI on the best way to approach this.

I’ve adapted the route slightly for our US visitors. We’ll talk about George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and the birth of American finance. We’ll discuss London’s influence on global markets, weights and measures, indexes and regulation, and, rather unexpectedly, we’ll probably mention a surprising number of notable mayors.

Andy Burnham in Manchester. Michael Bloomberg in New York. Rudy Giuliani. Boris Johnson.

Different cities. Different problems and politics. Different personalities. Markets keep refreshing, emphasising that markets don’t operate in isolation. Finance has always been about people.

When I joined the City, I thought my greatest competitive advantage was knowing how to use Excel. It helped me get the job.

Two years later I was sitting beside one of the City’s leading analysts. He updated his forecasts with a pencil and rubber before handing them to his secretary to type and fax to his clients.

The software changed. The quality of his research and forecasting didn’t.

Hidden in the title of this blog is the message I hope students remember.

It’s AIright.

Artificial intelligence will change almost every profession. It will make knowledge cheaper, faster and more accessible than ever before and that makes people more important because careers are rarely built on information alone but trust, reputation and relationships. On the ability to analyse persuade, challenge, listen, negotiate and lead. It takes two to make a market!

Every opportunity I’ve had in my career has come through people. The dealing room. The boardroom. Charity work. Junior Trader. Walking tours. None of those opportunities appeared because I knew the answer to every question.

AI can draft a report and analyse data, preliminarily.

It cannot build a relationship, shake a hand or understand the ritual of a business card.

AI can summarise history. It cannot create shared experiences like walking through the streets where that history happened (Hamilton link!!!) .

Tomorrow, as we walk from the Royal Exchange to the Bank of England and retrace the era of Hamilton and Washington, Pepys and Brown, I won’t just be talking about finance.

I’ll be talking about people, cheats, villains, dispute, regulation, accessibility in all forms, hustling –  trading!

It was true when I joined the City and it will still be true in the age of AI.

If you’re involved with a university finance, investment, economics or business society and would like Junior Trader to visit this November, we’d love to hear from you.