Fear, Greed and Claud: Meet the Traders Vibe Coding AI Bots to Beat the Market

Matt C. As for his career in the markets, he is crooked. The 37-year-old has been trading coins and crypto for more than a decade, racking up some “huge” losses along the way.

But he thinks he’s stumbled upon what could be a new trading life hack: getting an AI to trade for him.

Many of his friends in the markets are already jumping on the bandwagon and automating their trades. Currently, he’s talking to an AI platform about using his technology to create a semi-automated trading system that he hopes will help him make some money while dealing with the stress of a new baby, he told Business Insider.

“A domino fell, and then everyone, like me, went, ‘Oh, that sounds like a really good idea,'” he said.

Most day traders use AI-powered tools to avoid some common (and costly) human errors in their trading: panic-selling, over-trading, and revenge-trading.

As a result, investors have rushed to turn to AI to code their own stock screeners, trading agents, research assistants and other automated tools.

Many traders who spoke to Business Insider say that AI has helped boost their overall performance and has the ability to do what was previously thought impossible: turn a bad trader into a good one.

According to a survey conducted by eToro in 2025, the number of investors choosing investments using AI has risen by 75% in the past year. 38% of investors say AI will make better investment decisions than they can, and 46% say technology is the future of investing.

René Balke, a 32-year-old content creator who sells AI trading bots to investors, estimates that the number of investors signing up to use his AI tools through his YouTube channel has increased by about 50% in the past year.

Brendan Li, a former banker who runs an education group for traders to tweak their own AI tools, echoed that interest in his group has also skyrocketed. He estimates that incoming customers have jumped more than 500% in the past year, largely due to the craze surrounding the Vibe code.

“It’s very possible with Claude”

Li says he was once more of a gambler than a trader.

He started playing the markets while in college, right around the time crypto was taking off. At the time, many of his trades were speculative and driven by emotion.

During that time he came across many online guides that showed investors how they could automate their trades. In 2024, as AI chatbots and agents went mainstream, he viped a trading agent on the AI ​​platform Cursor and saw a significant improvement in the performance of his portfolio.

Li declined to go into his lifetime trading metrics, but said screenshots of a brokerage account he showed Business Insider showed an 87% return in the past month, beating the S&P 500 and using Claude, an AI agent that helped him wipe-code.

Li now sells courses and mentors other traders who want to vape their own bots. He says his team has about 380 “core members,” many of whom spend months refining their AI tools and gaining support in the community.

There are several ways for a trader new to a trading instrument to access the Vibe index, but Li said the process begins by asking the LLM company to create an index plan and providing instructions to set up the structure of the trading system. This includes giving the AI ​​a trading strategy, which trading signals to watch for, how to open and when to sell positions, and providing access to real-time market data.

Bots can be as simple or as complex as a trader wants, Li said. No special equipment is required except for a computer and a subscription to Claude or ChatGPT.

“Whether you want to focus on the basics, try to build an alcove, or want a fully automated system, it’s very possible with Claude,” he says, referring to the AI ​​model he often uses.

“It helps control fear and greed”

AI comes with some caveats. For one, AI tools can’t help a trader who doesn’t understand the basics of the market, Li said, so he avoids working with beginners.

Second, AI cannot give a trader a winning strategy, he said, adding that the tool is more helpful for those who struggle to stick to a trading plan or want to test multiple strategies.

For many, that benefit alone becomes a game. A 2025 survey by Quantified Strategies found that more than 35% of traders say the biggest challenge is managing emotions or dealing with losses during trading.

Li pointed out one of his own pitfalls when trading: getting impatient and selling a position at a loss.

“I don’t make emotional calls at 2 a.m.,” he said. “Most importantly, I think, it’s about sustainability and removing emotion from action.”

Dr. Reed Deitzman, a 79-year-old psychologist and software programmer, sees similar value in AI. He started “experimenting” with ChatGPT in April last year and, after feeding LLM a screenshot of the S&P 500 and triggering LLM with some parameters, created a system that helps traders spot good market opportunities. He calls it Merlin.

Merlin is always being refined, although Deitzman said it takes several weeks for the system to first run. Now, he is able to give Merlin some common inputs, such as the volume of the S&P 500 for the day, and the program gives him pre-market buy and sell signals, one-minute price forecasts, and a brief explanation of why certain signals are flashing.

Deitsman, who has been trading for 50 years, said the program isn’t difficult to create, although an investor bot needs to be fluent in the world of markets to be fully functional.

Deitzman trains traders with his work as a psychologist and is familiar with the emotional mistakes investors can make in the markets. Traders usually knock on his door in moments of desperation and after losing huge amounts in the market.

Often, their problems stem from not handling their emotions while trading, he points to problems such as revenge trading – attempts by a trader to compensate for losses by placing more aggressive trades – overtrading, undertrading and other errors.

“It helps control fear and greed,” he said of why the program was effective. “When you have a buffer between you and the screen, it gives you a sense of security.”

Deitzman said his performance improved as he used Merlin more. A demo brokerage account he used, Merlin, posted a 788% return in the past month, according to screenshots and written performance logs seen by Business Insider.

Deitzman adds that the more he uses Merlin, the more Merlin’s principles become intuitive to him, allowing him to spot the same buy and sell signals on his own.

“A lot of the time, I don’t use it because I learned it,” he said.

Balke, which sells automated trading systems, has seen similar success with AI tools. He first started trading 12 years ago. After two years of mostly losses, Balke, who has a background in programming, said he decided to manually code an automated trading system to help him execute his trades and stick to a strategy.

Balke has coded several more bots in Claude and now runs a few fully automated brokerage accounts, meaning he no longer trades himself. One of the accounts grew 106% this year, according to performance records he showed to Business Insider.

Some of that success is due to the run-up of major indexes in recent years, Bahlke said, although more is helped by the fact that he can now follow his strategy without falling prey to his own emotions.

“Since I’ve been using trading bots, it’s been pretty consistent,” he said. “It will execute the strategy perfectly without any emotion.”

More ambitious traders will look to AI tools in the coming years because the benefits are too good to pass up, Bahlke speculated.

In his opinion, Li said AI systems have almost closed the gap between retail traders and enterprises.

“There are so many things you can create or analyze based on AI to learn from your mistakes. So, it can 100% turn a bad trader into a good trader,” Li said.

Deitzman, who has been trading since the 1970s, said it’s too early to say if AI is the future for retail, but there’s a lot of potential.

“If you asked what the world was like in 1975 — I was holding my new calculator that I bought for $250,” he said. “Can you imagine what technology will look like in 50 years?”

Do you have a story to share about vipcoding or trading the markets? Contact this reporter by email jsor@businessinsider.com.