Is Your Job On The AI Lay-Off List?

If you’ve been saving and investing for years, one question eventually comes up: “Am I actually on the right track?”

Many investors have multiple accounts—401(k)s, IRAs, brokerage accounts—but rarely step back to see how everything fits together. That’s why we offer a Free Portfolio Analysis and 1,000-Foot View Financial Plan.

This complimentary review looks at the big picture of your financial life, including:

• Your overall investment allocation • Hidden risks or portfolio overlap • Fees that may be reducing returns • How your investments align with your long-term goals

Think of it as a financial second opinion—a chance to step back and make sure your strategy is built for the future.

If you’d like clarity and confidence about where you stand, schedule your free portfolio analysis today.

Click here to schedule a meeting — I’m here to help you take the next step toward financial freedom.

Dream Bigger, Sleep Better

AI Isn’t Coming for Your Job. It’s Coming for the Boring Parts of It.

When I was a quantitative analyst intern at CNBC, there was a certain type of request that could make your day disappear.

Someone would come running over with a question:

“When was the last time this stock traded at this price?”

Or:

“How many times has this happened historically?”

“Can you compare these two data sets?”

“What happened to the stock the last five times this occurred?”

None of these questions were particularly difficult.

The problem was that they were time-consuming.

You had to find the right data, pull it together, clean it up, compare it, double-check it, and then make sure you weren’t accidentally comparing apples to oranges. Sometimes you were digging through databases or spreadsheets, writing formulas, or manually piecing together information that was scattered across different sources.

And after all that work, the answer might be something that could fit into one sentence on television.

That was the job.

At the time, this was just part of the process. You didn’t question it. That’s how research worked.

Today, I can take that same question and ask an AI.

“Find the last 10 times this stock traded at this level and compare what happened over the following 30 trading days.”

And instead of spending half the afternoon building the analysis, I can get an answer in minutes — and then spend my time thinking about what the answer actually means.

That’s the part of AI that I think gets overlooked.

AI isn’t just a chatbot. It’s a productivity machine.

The obvious AI story is that a machine can write an email, create a picture, or summarize a meeting.

Those are neat tricks.

But the real economic impact may be much more boring — and much more powerful.

AI can take the repetitive research, data gathering, sorting, comparing and first-pass analysis that employees have traditionally done manually and compress it dramatically.

Think about an investment analyst.

Historically, a lot of the job wasn’t sitting in a room having brilliant thoughts about the market. It was finding the information necessary to have those thoughts.

That’s a huge distinction.

If AI can get an analyst from question to useful information in five minutes instead of two hours, that analyst doesn’t necessarily become obsolete.

Maybe they become 20 times more useful.

And that creates a fascinating question for the job market.

Do we need fewer employees — or better employees?

Imagine two investment analysts.

Analyst A spends most of the day gathering data, building spreadsheets and answering basic research questions.

Analyst B has AI doing much of that work and spends the day interpreting the information, challenging assumptions, talking to clients and developing investment ideas.

Who is more valuable?

Probably Analyst B.

But now take it one step further.

If one analyst using AI can accomplish what five analysts used to accomplish, what happens to the other four?

That’s where the conversation gets uncomfortable.

AI could make employees insanely good at their jobs.

A great financial advisor could potentially research faster.

A great lawyer could analyze more documents.

A great doctor could process more information.

A great salesperson could prepare for more meetings.

A great financial analyst could test more ideas.

The best employees may not be replaced by AI.

They may be supercharged by it.

But there is another side to that coin.

If one employee can suddenly do the work of five, the company may eventually decide it only needs one or two employees.

That’s not science fiction. That’s basic economics.

The first people affected may not be the worst employees.

This is the part I find particularly interesting.

We tend to imagine automation replacing the person who isn’t very good at their job.

But AI doesn’t necessarily work that way.

It can eliminate entire categories of tasks — including tasks performed by very smart people.

My CNBC internship is a perfect example.

The research wasn’t necessarily difficult because the people doing it weren’t smart.

It was difficult because someone had to do the work.

Someone had to pull the data.

Someone had to run the comparison.

Someone had to check the numbers.

Someone had to turn the raw information into something useful.

AI doesn’t care how smart you are.

If your job consists largely of tasks that a machine can perform faster, cheaper and accurately, eventually somebody is going to ask why you’re doing them manually.

And that is where the labor market gets interesting.

The winners will be the people who move up the value chain.

I don’t think the future is simply “AI takes all the jobs.”

I think it’s more complicated.

The value of the human being changes.

If AI handles the what, humans increasingly have to handle the so what?

The machine can find the last 10 times something happened.

But should we care?

It can compare two portfolios.

But which one actually makes sense for the client?

It can analyze thousands of financial statements.

But what business deserves your capital?

It can generate a retirement projection.

But what does the client actually want their retirement to look like?

Those are judgment questions.

And judgment is where humans still have a massive advantage.

The irony is that AI could actually make the best professionals more human, not less.

Instead of spending your day moving numbers around a spreadsheet, you can spend more time thinking, communicating, creating and solving problems.

That’s a pretty good trade.

But don’t confuse productivity with job security.

There’s an important financial-planning lesson buried in all of this.

If you’re working today, don’t assume that being good at your current job is enough.

Your career is an asset.

And like any other asset, you need to manage it.

The safest employee probably isn’t the person who says, “AI can’t do what I do.”

It’s the person who says:

“I’m going to figure out how AI can help me do what I do better.”

Learn the technology.

Use it.

Experiment with it.

Become the person in the office who knows how to take a three-hour process and turn it into a 20-minute process.

Because when technology changes the productivity equation, the people who understand how to use it generally have a much better seat at the table.

And there is a funny connection back to that old CNBC internship.

Back then, if someone asked me when a stock last traded at a certain price, I had to go hunting for the answer.

Today, I can ask an AI.

The technology didn’t make the question less valuable.

It made the answer cheaper to find.

And that may be the real AI revolution in the job market.

AI isn’t necessarily replacing intelligence.

It is replacing the friction between having a question and getting an answer.

The people who figure out what to do with that extra time could become extraordinarily productive.

The companies that figure out how to capitalize on it could become extraordinarily profitable.

And the workers who ignore it?

They may eventually discover that their biggest competition wasn’t another employee.

It was the employee sitting next to them who figured out how to use AI.

Click here to schedule a meeting — I’m here to help you take the next step toward financial freedom.

Colin Symons, CIO Lloyd Financial Group

JOLTS Job Openings were 7.271MM vs. exp. 7.313MM, with last month revised lower to 7.359MM. The Quits rate fell from 2% to 1.9%. Overall, a sign the job market is getting a bit weaker, but not a huge deal.

ISM Manufacturing was 54.6 vs. exp. 55.2, with Employment also getting a little worse.

Oil hit $90 and rates keep rising on those tensions, which is creating continued risk-off action. At what point does it get priced in?

GS says S&P 500 short interest hit the highest in a decade.

Gitlab (GTLB) is up 20% after beating earnings and showing a record backlog.

Dell is up 9% after beating earnings and raising guidance.

MongoDB (MDB) fell -14% as higher expenses outweighed strong numbers.

ADP Employment and Factory Orders today.

Bottom line: When do stresses get priced in?

Click here to schedule a meeting — I’m here to help you take the next step toward financial freedom.

Disclosures/Regulation:

This content is intended to provide general information about Lloyd Financial. It is not intended to offer or deliver investment advice in any way. Information regarding investment services are provided solely to gain an understanding of our investment philosophy, our strategies and to be able to contact us for further information.

All information has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but its accuracy is not guaranteed. There is no representation or warranty as to the current accuracy, reliability or completeness of, nor liability for, decisions based on such information and it should not be relied on as such.

The views expressed in this commentary are subject to change based on market and other conditions. These documents may contain certain statements that may be deemed forward‐looking statements. Please note that any such statements are not guarantees of any future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected. Any projections, market outlooks, or estimates are based upon certain assumptions and should not be construed as indicative of actual events that will occur.

Past performance is no guarantee of future returns.

Different types of investments involve varying degrees of risk. Therefore, it should not be assumed that future performance of any specific investment or investment strategy will be profitable