Corporate investment in artificial intelligence is showing financial benefits, with early adopters outperforming in earnings and market returns. Morgan Stanley’s AI Adopter Survey reveals that AI integration is accelerating, especially in sectors such as financials, real estate, and consumer durables.<\/p>\n
Companies actively using AI are seeing better earnings revisions and stock price momentum. In financial services, the adoption is increasing rapidly, with insurance firms’ AI usage rising from 48% to 71% since January 2025, and broader financial services reaching 73%. These firms are utilising AI for customer service improvements and compliance enhancements.<\/p>\n
The consumer sector is also experiencing a considerable uptake in AI. In the durables and apparel industries, AI usage went from 20% to 44%, largely due to supply chain optimisation, with retailers like Walmart and Target implementing AI for effective inventory management.<\/p>\n
In real estate, the exposure to AI among REITs increased to 32% from the year’s start. Automation is improving productivity in leasing, property management, and brokerage services, where many tasks lend themselves to automation. Analysts note that firms with significant AI integration enjoy robust earnings revisions, market outperformance, and the gap between AI leaders and others is growing. This trend is expected to persist according to Morgan Stanley.<\/p>\n
We believe the growing gap between AI adopters and laggards presents a clear opportunity for derivative traders. The outperformance mentioned by the bank’s analysts is becoming more pronounced, so we should use options to position for this divergence to accelerate. Traders can structure trades that profit from both the upside of the leaders and the potential downside of the laggards.<\/p>\n
This trend mirrors the broader market, where a handful of tech leaders have accounted for over 70% of the S&P 500’s gains this year. Unlike the dot-com era, which was fueled by speculation, this rally is supported by tangible earnings growth from AI implementation. This suggests that buying call options on the primary AI beneficiaries and their key customers remains a sound strategy.<\/p>\n
Within the financial sector, we see opportunities for pairs trades that isolate the AI adoption factor. One could, for instance, buy calls on a firm like JPMorgan, which has a stated $15 billion annual tech budget heavily focused on AI, while buying puts on smaller, regional banks with less capacity to invest. The survey\u2019s findings on rising adoption in insurance suggest looking for similar leaders in that specific sub-sector.<\/p>\n
The consumer space shows this divergence clearly, as Walmart recently hit all-time highs after its earnings were boosted by tech-led supply chain efficiencies. We would consider strategies that benefit from this leader’s continued strength, such as selling put spreads to collect premium while the stock likely grinds higher. This contrasts with competitors who are still in the earlier stages of integrating similar technology.<\/p>\n
We also anticipate that implied volatility will rise for the laggards as their earnings potential comes under greater scrutiny. Traders could consider buying straddles or strangles on companies in exposed sectors, like real estate services, that have not yet detailed a clear AI strategy. This positions them to profit from sharp price movements as the market begins to punish inaction.<\/p>\n
Create your live VT Markets account<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0start trading<\/a>\u00a0now. <\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Early AI adopters in finance, real estate, and retail enjoy stronger earnings, stock momentum, and market leadership.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":16986,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-live-updates"],"acf":{"acf_article_selection_author":null},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}