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The Invisible Cost of AI Consumption Every sell-side research analyst publishes with an assumption baked in. The assumption is that their work will be read by a human, cited by a human, and acted on by a human. The commercial relationship between sell-side and buy-side has always been built on that premise. Research is produced,…

A Language for Ideas Every great leap in human understanding has begun with a new capacity to see. The telescope did not create galaxies, but it made them observable. The microscope did not invent cellular life; it revealed a world that had always existed beyond the threshold of human sight. In each case, the instrument…

Every industry runs on contracts. Some are written. Some very important ones are not. Written contracts determine who pays, who owns what, who bears liability, who may access a service. They are essential. But markets also depend on another kind of contract entirely: one that is never signed, rarely discussed, and universally assumed. Capital markets…

The case for letting AI write the research is easy to make: faster, cheaper, more consistent. The case for what quietly disappears is harder, and it matters more. There is an assumption taking hold across capital markets. As AI becomes capable of writing research, the obvious move is to automate as much of the writing…

The conversation about AI in capital markets is still fixated on models. But as foundation models converge into utilities, the durable advantage moves elsewhere — to how institutions interpret, reason, and remember. The risk is that the very systems meant to sharpen that edge quietly dissolve it into consensus. A Shift in Differentiation For decades,…

As capital markets accelerate their adoption of AI, the industry’s center of gravity has settled on a visible and intuitive place: the interface. New applications promise faster access to research, more intuitive workflows, and increasingly conversational ways of interacting with information. Progress is measured in user experience. The prevailing assumption is that competitive advantage will…

For decades, the economics of investment research have rested on a fragile but functional architecture: (1) Attribution, (2) Entitlement, and (3) Feedback. Research is produced by the sell side, distributed through controlled channels, and consumed by the buy side. Critically, the producer has always retained some visibility into who consumed it, how it travelled, and…

There is a structural break happening in the consumption of investment research. For decades, the model was stable. Research was produced, distributed, and consumed in formats that preserved its economic and intellectual integrity. A report was read, a model was reviewed, a call was held. Attribution was clear, entitlements were enforced, and – critically –…

Amid a year when banking trust is under the microscope, President Trump’s latest allegations of “debanking” by the nation’s largest banks demand more than another round of public relations management. Setting politics aside, the heat turned on banks like JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America is symptomatic of a broader existential dilemma: Who controls the…