On June 23, a group of eight House Financial Services Committee Democrats published a letter sent to the SEC’s chairman, Paul Atkins, asking him to explain what oversight, guidance and investor protections are in place as retail brokerage platforms begin allowing AI agents to make autonomous trades on behalf of retail investors. In the letter, the lawmakers wrote that agentic trading raises questions about investor protection, broker-dealer responsibilities, market integrity, and AI-developer accountability. They also inquired whether existing securities laws are sufficient to regulate agentic trading or whether additional congressional action may be needed.

The lawmakers noted that certain retail brokerage platforms have begun allowing users to connect third-party AI agents to trading accounts and automate investment decisions and stock trades on users’ behalf, and that agentic trading is already available for stocks, cryptocurrencies, and options, and may expand to products such as event contracts and futures. They pointed to disclosures stating that platforms may not guarantee the accuracy, completeness or suitability of AI output and may not control, supervise or audit the agents, and that AI agents may make errors, misinterpret instructions, act on incomplete or outdated information, and behave unexpectedly. They added that generative AI systems may contain “biased or conflicted information” and, if large numbers of market participants rely on similar models, may produce correlated trading decisions that increase volatility or undermine market integrity.

A written response was requested by July 31.