Wall Street eliminated 10,600 jobs last year.
Total headcount is now the lowest since 2021. And this is just the beginning.
I have traded for 38 years. I taught portfolio management to 28 grad students at Loyola last night. These kids are eating up technical analysis because they understand something their professors refuse to admit.
Fundamental analysts are becoming extinct.
AI is faster, cheaper, and more accurate. It doesn't complain about healthcare costs. It doesn't embarrass the firm. It doesn't upgrade stocks at the top and downgrade them at the bottom.
The new term my students coined is "AI'd."
Twenty years ago, businesses got Amazonized.
Now analysts are getting AI'd.
And it's happening across every industry.
The Machines Don't Care About Your DCF Model
Goldman Sachs downgraded MBX Biosciences in early December. The stock gapped down on the news.
Then it recovered. Then it rallied another 82%.
Quantum computing stocks went parabolic last year with no earnings. Nuclear companies with theoretical reactor models ran 500%. There was no fundamental reason to own any of them.
The machines that move markets today don't analyze balance sheets. They read price action, order flow, and momentum. Your PE ratios mean nothing to an algorithm scanning for breakouts.
What Analysts Care About vs. What Actually Pays
Here is what Wall Street analysts obsess over:
- Price to earnings ratios
- Enterprise value to EBITDA
- Discounted cash flow models
- Quarterly guidance variances
Here is what machines care about:
- Slope of the MACD
- Order flow direction
- Momentum confirmation
- Technical breakout levels
One list has been around for a hundred years. Everyone uses it. That means it provides zero edge.
The other list is considered voodoo by most Wall Street firms. But it's the only thing that actually predicts where money flows next.
The Professor's Prediction
I told my grad students at Loyola what I'm telling you now.
In four years, 90% of Wall Street fundamental analysts will be out of work. They won't need them anymore. AI will either replace them because it's more accurate, or the analysts themselves will prove so useless that firms stop paying for their opinions.
Consider what happened this earnings season. Analysts upgrade stocks after they've already run 200 points. They downgrade after the crash has already happened. They chase price instead of leading it.
I covered small cap semiconductors as an analyst decades ago. I understand fundamental modeling better than most talking heads on television. But I learned that fundamentals tell you why to buy. They never tell you when.
The Only Path Forward
My students are learning technical analysis because they see the future clearly.
If you can't read charts in this day and age, you have no edge. If you're relying on analysts who missed the entire AI rally, you're paying for opinions that destroy capital.
The analysts getting fired aren't stupid. They're just operating with tools built for a market that no longer exists.
Price action reflects everything. Investor psychology, machine positioning, and behavioral patterns all show up in the charts before they show up in the earnings reports. That's why we study price. That's what pays.
Do you want to get paid or do you want to sound smart? There's a big difference.
Position Before The Sorting Event
The Genesis COG System was built for this exact environment. It identifies where machines are positioned and when institutional money shifts direction. No analyst opinions. No backward-looking fundamentals. Just the price action that actually moves your account.
AI is compressing outcomes faster than recovery allows. The disciplined investors who adapt will thrive. The ones clinging to outdated models will wonder what happened.
See how Genesis COG detects machine positioning before the crowd notices →
Professor Jeffrey Bierman
Creator of the Genesis COG System