There was a time when trading meant people — not machines. A time when decisions were made with intuition, with risk in mind, and with accountability in hand. Markets had a pulse. They were imperfect, but they were human.
Today, that pulse has been replaced by algorithms — powerful, lightning-fast learning machines that execute millions of trades without emotion or pause. Speed is the game, and automation is the king. What was once driven by analysis and judgment is now dominated by code and milliseconds.
As this evolution unfolded, so too did another trend: the growing concentration of wealth. A staggering share of the world’s money now rests in the hands of a shrinking minority. For the average person, markets no longer feel like a pathway to prosperity — they feel like a game rigged for someone else.
When I was studying finance at the master's level, ethical behaviour wasn’t just taught — it was emphasised as the foundation of everything. We were told that trust, integrity, and transparency were the cornerstones of functioning financial systems. Without ethics, markets crumble. Without fairness, capitalism fails.
And yet here we are — surrounded by more data, disclosure, and transparency than ever before, but still somehow less trust, less fairness, and less equality. We can see everything, but we’ve lost sight of what matters. It's not a lack of information that plagues the markets — it's a lack of shared responsibility.
We must ask: who are the markets really serving today?
If the wealth they generate is concentrated at the top, if the systems they run on are built for speed over scrutiny, and if the public increasingly feels locked out, then something fundamental is broken.
The ASX and the Case for Reform
The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), like many modern exchanges, has embraced automation. But while we often look for someone to blame — the institutions, the machines, the regulators — it's equally important to ask how much responsibility we all share in allowing systems to evolve without enough ethical oversight.
It’s time for the ASX to lead, not just in innovation, but in accountability. It needs to modernise with purpose. That means building a screening overlay on all stock orders — an automated, AI-driven system that actively searches for manipulation, insider trading behaviour, and regulatory breaches.
And when such activity is detected, the system should *instantly halt trading* on the relevant security for manual investigation — not after a delay, not at the end of the trading day, but in real time.
This is about building safeguards that act *before* damage is done, not after. It’s about protecting the integrity of the market before public trust erodes further.
Markets Must Work for All
We need to re-engineer our markets not just for profit, but for principle. Not just for liquidity, but for equity — in both senses of the word. That means ethical oversight, broader access, and ensuring that the benefits of capitalism are shared, not hoarded.
The markets don’t need to be perfect. But they need to be fair. They need to be human again. And most of all, they need to remember that equality isn’t a luxury — it’s a requirement for a system that claims to serve everyone.
Because if we let markets lose their soul, we risk losing the public’s trust — and that’s something no algorithm can ever restore.
