In this episode of Disruption/Interruption, host KJ sits down with David Trainer, CEO of New Constructs, a financial technology firm using machine learning and natural language processing to expose the accounting distortions buried in corporate filings. David pulls back the curtain on decades of Wall Street corruption — from two sets of earnings numbers (one for retail, one for institutions) to the legal practice of front-running client order flow. He explains how he built a robo-analyst to do what human analysts won't: read every footnote of every filing to reveal the truth about corporate profitability. David also shares how Google Cloud chose New Constructs to build the first-ever AI investing agent, and why he believes clean, transparent data is the best defense against both Wall Street manipulation and future AI bad actors.

Four Key Takeaways:

1. The system was designed to serve Wall Street, not investors (4:11)
   David witnessed firsthand at Credit Suisse how analysts maintained two sets of numbers — artificially low estimates for retail investors to manufacture "beats," and real numbers shared only with institutional clients. Wall Street research analysts don't generate revenue for their firms; they exist to facilitate investment banking relationships, meaning they're incentivized to stay bullish regardless of reality.
2. What's unethical isn't always unlawful (8:37)
   Regulation Fair Disclosure — the law requiring companies to disclose material information to all investors simultaneously — wasn't enacted until the year 2000, after the tech bubble burst. Before that, selective tipping was perfectly legal. And today, payment for order flow (selling your trade data to firms like Citadel before your order is filled) remains legal — a structural advantage that benefits Wall Street at retail investors' expense.
3. 96% of Wall Street analyst ratings are "buy" or "hold" (11:28)
   Only about 4% of stocks covered by Wall Street analysts receive a sell rating. Trainer uses this stat to illustrate a core conflict of interest: analysts are paid by bankers to say good things about companies. Expecting honest sell-side research is like expecting a car salesman to talk down their own inventory.
4. New Constructs + Google Cloud built the first AI agent for investing (22:59)
   Google Cloud selected New Constructs — because of their clean, auditable data — to build Finsights, an AI chatbot that answers sophisticated investing questions: which companies are overstating earnings, which stocks are most likely to miss next quarter, which have the most off-balance-sheet debt. Every data point can be traced back to the original corporate filings. Their Core Earnings Leaders Index outperformed the S&P 500 by 900 basis points in 2025.

Quote of the Show (12:24):
"Expecting Wall Street to talk bad about a stock is like expecting a car salesman to talk bad about their cars." — David Trainer

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Ways to connect with David Trainer:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidtrainer
Company Website: https://newconstructs.com

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