Can a Computer Learn to Speak Trader?

Minding the naughty list The particulars of financial industry record-keeping requirements have evolved as the ability to capture and store certain communications has improved with technological innovation.

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and television series. "The bottom line is that we have the ability to take in different, not just literal translations, but also jargon as well."

Minding the naughty list

The particulars of financial industry record-keeping requirements have evolved as the ability to capture and store certain communications has improved with technological innovation. Wall Street regulators first required recording of at least some telephone calls in 1998 under what is known as the "Taping Rule."

U.S. regulators now treat essentially any written communication regarding business as a record. They have levied billions in fines against firms for failing to rein in traders who talked shop on messaging services like WhatsApp.

Until recently, a common way for companies to handle sifting through the enormous quantity of emails that a Wall Street firm produces even in a day was to apply what is known as a lexicon, an ever-growing list of words and phrases that trigger human review.

One problem: Any phrase can be innocuous or illicit, depending largely on context, so the lexicon approach can result in a large number of false positives.

Lexicons can also produce false negatives, as traders adapt their communications to try to avoid trigger words. A trader might write "Call m3 now," or turn to emojis to try to duck detection.