Dollar Bill: The algorithm ate my broker – but should it?

Bulls N’ Bears Dollar Bill has enjoyed (but often ignored) the advice of the same broker for nearly thirty years. George was an old university friend and never much good at anything but somehow turned a shared love of cheap wine and bad poetry in the back room of the Club into a career dispensing financial advice to a tight circle of members. None of us really cared that he was a Muppet, because he was our Muppet.

The ritual with Georgie was as tired as the carpets at the Club. One of us would lean back in the leather, sip something brown and ask for advice. It was free, and probably worth about as much. To be fair to the old boy, he did have a strike rate of sorts with maybe one in ten coming good.

“Buy gold,” was his evergreen contribution, a line that required little thought. He also liked to chirp out “short the banks,” although most of us suspected a personal grudge was doing the heavy lifting there. Around the room, polite nodding would follow, accompanied by the unspoken acknowledgement that our kids could probably offer better insight.

The real theatre though, happened on the phone. Dollar Bill, like so many others, would dial in with a trading idea seeking confirmation — or at least constructive advice “why not”. The well-meaning George would hum thoughtfully, make a show of sounding informed, then do exactly what he was told, tacking on a more-than-decent commission for good measure.

For a while this pantomime worked. There was comfort in the illusion that wisdom was being offered, and perhaps more importantly that his Club fees might one day be paid. But markets have changed faster than those of us trading them. What was once tolerable has become absurd.

The man who once provided little more than rote stock tips has been replaced by systems that don’t pause to breathe and execute for cents in the dollar. And even when George did stumble across something useful, most of us would hang up and punch the instruction into CommSec which also didn’t present us with the concern of being half drunk. I know, I know. 

Broker advice and execution have gone the way of the fax machine, the bowler hat and the ashtray on a Qantas flight - although Dollar Bill still owns one each of the first two. ASIC, in its “597 Report” estimates roughly 85 per cent of all trades in Australian listed equities are now sourced via programs and apps. The vast majority of quotes, cancellations and orders that make the market hum are now fired off by an algorithm somewhere in the cloud.

Yet for all that automation, there’s still the odd human clinging to the trade blotter like driftwood. Brokers haven’t vanished entirely – a quick glance around the bars of Australia Square in Sydney will confirm that point. But these days, at least when it comes to the “buy and sell”, brokers are being out-talked and out-serviced by the algorithm.

Globally, the numbers are just as stark. JP Morgan estimates more than 80 per cent of global equity turnover is now program-driven, and European research house GreySpark Partners - a major advisor to investment banks with 1000s of employees spread across 40 cities - claims algorithmic and quant strategies account for nearly 70 per cent of European equity market turnover. Advice meanwhile, has thinned to little more than small talk.

In 2019 Australia had almost 28,000 licensed financial advisers. By mid-2025, fewer than 15,500 remained. To be fair, the AMP scandal of charging dead people advice fees and tighter regulation took a chunk out of the industry. But even allowing for that, the numbers represent a 40 per cent collapse in a little over five years. With the possible exception of taxi drivers, it’s hard to think of another profession that’s been technologically euthanised in such a short space of time.

Treasury’s 2023 report; “Quality of Advice Review” called it a “crisis of accessibility.” Advice hasn’t just become scarcer; it now appears increasingly like a luxury good.

The human pause - that fragile gap between thought and trade - is being automated out of existence. Retail traders, armed with dashboards and dopamine, can push a junior explorer 40 per cent higher by the time the morning tea trolley swings by at the Club. Often there are no new assays, just new hashtags. 

CommSec now boasts over three million users, nearly half under 40, with the vast majority trading without a single conversation. Add Stake, Superhero and a dozen others – most of which Dollar Bill learnt about from his 19 year old son - and Australia now has more than four million app-based accounts driving about three-quarters of retail flow. What used to be a phone call has become a thumb swipe, not all that dissimilar to that Tinder thingy. 

Today’s brokers increasingly survive on the oxygen of corporate-finance, raisings, IPOs and placements. Global ETF assets have swollen past US$13 trillion, while Australian ETFs manage nearly A$300 billion. It’s automation over advice, index over instinct. 

But despite all that, some of Dollar Bill’s best trades still come from a hybrid model - a human whisper from a Club member executed cleanly via app. And yes, on occasion, Dollar Bill does still follow the advice of a broker – just not George’s. 

ASIC’s August 2025 consultation paper on trading systems (Paper 386), proposed kill-switches for runaway algos and the US SEC has floated similar circuit-breaker rules. When the plumbers start worrying about the pipes, you know the water’s running too fast. 

This isn’t to say it’s all bad. Information has never been freer, access never easier, and the new generation of investor is sharper and faster than Dollar Bill’s old-school lot ever was. But the tide has turned and advice givers are now an endangered species.   

When Dollar Bill ran this thesis past a few learned colleagues at the Club, it rattled more than one cage. While some laughed, a few in particular - brokers and good ones - wanted to know whether Dollar Bill really believed the human adviser was finished. The truth, as we discussed deep into the night, is more complicated. 

Yes, algorithms dominate the tape. Yes, 80–85 per cent of equity volume globally is now machine-generated. And yes, adviser numbers have collapsed with more than half the country trading through an app while waiting for a flat white.  

But markets aren’t just math. They reflect behaviour, panic, ego, denial, fatigue, optimism and fear and none of those have been automated out of existence. In fact, if anything, they’ve been amplified. 

When volatility spikes, people don’t open an algorithm; they open a whisky. They call someone who knows the difference between a trade and a tantrum.  

And this isn’t nostalgia. Three of the largest money managers on the planet - Vanguard, Fidelity and Russell Investments - have all published variations of the same finding: advised clients outperform self-directed ones by 2–3 percentage points a year largely because a human adviser stops them making emotionally catastrophic decisions.  

Panic selling, overtrading and momentum chasing require restraint no algorithm can provide. The broker’s greatest value is often preventing a trade, not executing one. 

Try getting CommSec to talk you out of a terrible idea. All you get is a pop-up box and a “How was your experience?” survey. Try navigating a placement without a human. Try reading management’s body language on a site visit from an algorithm. Try calling an app after-hours to ask whether a CEO looked nervous or whether the third row of the drill core tray seemed suspiciously light. There are things the machines can do - speed, precision, pattern-recognition - but intuition still lives in the human spine. 

Then there’s the long lunch factor; the part the academics never model. Markets are built on relationships; the whisper networks, dinner conversations, misread signals and gossip you hear at the bar. Cities have been bankrupted on rumours and fortunes have been made on a shared hunch over a fillet mignon with a good pinot.   

So maybe the algorithm hasn’t eaten my broker after all but merely swallowed the routine. What remains - judgement, context, restraint and the ability to read the room - still resides with people. And while poor old George was always destined to be replaced, some of his colleagues, admittedly fewer by the year, still offer something machines don’t. 

Only people can provide guidance and a filter to the endless chatter. Only people can stand between investors and their worst impulses. And in a market increasingly driven by algorithms and speed, it’s this service that may be the rarest and most valuable of all.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au