How technology is changing the trading experience

How technology is changing the trading experience

Today, the entire trade cycle can be done via technology – mobile trading, real-time data, execution algorithms, artificial intelligence-assisted analysis. It sounds like an impressive list of adoption numbers. Look at how technology is used at each stage of the trade cycle, and a picture becomes clear: the execution layer is far ahead of the decision-making one.

AI is shortening the path from market data to trading decisions. Three-quarters of UK-based financial companies participating in the 2024 BoE/FCA survey reported having adopted AI already; that share increased from 58% in 2022 to 75% in 2024. Out of the use cases described by respondents, 55% had some automated decision-making, while 2% of cases ran with a human decision-maker left out.

Institutional traders see a trend developing here. Generative AI is ranked the most influential technology on trading for the third year running, according to J.P. Morgan’s 2026 e-Trading Survey. Models analyze faster, but people still sign.

According to those same survey results, respondents believed electronic channels would cover 60% of trading in 2026 and 70% in 2027. Electronic doesn’t mean automatic yet. MiFID II, the EU framework regulating financial markets, limits the term ‘algorithmic trading’ to cases when order parameters (such as timing and volume) are set by computer with minimal or no human input.

In retail trading, the entry point to automation is still the Expert Advisor running on MetaTrader. This is where traders fall into two groups: those who require automation without coding and those who need programmability. Pepperstone has a solution for the latter through cTrader robots, API services, backtesting capabilities, and VPS. Interactive Brokers and Saxo offer this through documented APIs and FIX connectivity.

It has changed where trading happens, and how fast. In Plus500’s results for 2025, 89% of the OTC income was generated via mobile or tablet apps. In the FCA research of 2024, roughly 48% of mobile trading app users in the sample were under 35 years old.

There is another set of observations about mobile trading users, and it doesn’t make for pleasant reading. In an NBER paper, authors using transaction data from two German banks concluded that mobile phone trades were linked to increased buying of lottery-like assets and more return chasing. Low transaction friction doesn’t guarantee good results.

JustMarkets, a global multi-asset CFD broker, gives traders four ways to access a single trading account. In addition to MT4 and MT5 terminals, there is a WebTerminal that operates from a web browser without any additional installations, along with its dedicated app.

JustMarkets Trading mobile app incorporates the majority of the analytical functionality: deposits and withdrawals, Economic Calendar and news, technical analysis with more than 1,000 indicators. The demo account replicates the live environment and becomes a free way to test the EA operation.

Risk Warning: Trading Forex and CFDs involves significant risk and can result in the loss of your invested capital. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.