This came up in Chinese AI developer communities this week, and the numbers are almost beside the point.
A physics researcher (no CS background, no finance training) connected Claude to a US brokerage account via API, wrote a simple automated trading strategy, and ran a live experiment for one week with $500. The rules were deliberately conservative: long equities only, no margin, no futures, no shorting, no HFT. "You can't earn beyond your own understanding," the author wrote, "so I only do things I can understand."
After seven trading days: $510.65, up 2.20%. VOO returned 1.88% that week. QQQ returned 2.05%.
The author is careful about this: one week is not a result, it's a data point. But 374 comments later, the conversation has moved somewhere more interesting than return attribution.
The actual problem being solved
