And there we have it: yet another proposed date for parliamentary elections in Serbia. This time, according to President Aleksandar Vučić, they may take place on either 18 or 25 October, writes Helena Ivanov.

But, this is not the first date the President has suggested. Earlier this year, July was among the possibilities mentioned – which, obviously, did not happen. In June, Vučić went considerably further, announcing that he would remain President for only a few more weeks, after which he would resign and support the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, potentially as its candidate for Prime Minister. More than a few weeks have since passed, and he remains President.

In the meantime, October, November, December and even January 2027 have all been suggested at various points in the never-ending discussion over when Serbia will actually go to the polls.

And then, a few days ago, speaking to the Radio Television of Serbia, the country’s public broadcaster, Vučić claimed that he had finally made his decision: parliamentary elections would take place on either 18 or 25 October. Even this supposedly final announcement, of course, still leaves us with two dates.

A foreign reader may reasonably wonder why there has been so much drama over when, exactly, Serbia will hold its next elections. But domestically, this constant pushing back of the date has raised eyebrows for another reason: Vučić has historically been anything but reluctant to call an election.

Since the Serbian Progressive Party came to power in 2012, Serbia has held four rounds of snap parliamentary elections: in 2014, 2016, 2022 and 2023. Snap elections have, in other words, become quite regular in Serbia’s political life.

Vučić repeatedly used them at times of political pressure. When the country entered a crisis, or when protests threatened to gain momentum, an election offered an opportunity to reset the political landscape. Most recently, after the two mass shootings in May 2023 triggered months of large anti-government protests, Serbia went to early parliamentary elections that December. Vučić’s coalition won, and the protest movement gradually lost momentum.

The political logic was relatively straightforward. Each electoral victory allowed Vučić to present the result as renewed democratic legitimacy and, in practice, helped kill the momentum from the streets.

This time, however, things have been different.

The student-led protests that began following the collapse of the Novi Sad railway station canopy in November 2024 grew into something far more durable than previous protest movements. More importantly, they eventually transformed from a protest movement into one that is openly demanding political change. Since May 2025, students have explicitly called for snap elections.

Unlike previous waves of protest, this one did not simply disappear after several weeks or months. It survived for well over a year, repeatedly bringing enormous numbers of people onto the streets across Serbia. For example, on 15^th March 2025, it is estimated that as many as 350,000 people attended the protest in Belgrade, making it the largest protest in Serbia’s contemporary political history.

The students have also stated that they intend to contest the election through a list of 250 MP candidates. Crucially, these candidates are not expected to be the students themselves. Rather, the movement has been selecting people it considers capable of representing its demands, while deliberately distancing itself from both the existing opposition and the ruling establishment. As of today, the names of those on the list remain unknown, with students stating that the list will only become public when the elections are officially called.

And yet, despite his previous willingness to resort to elections to end the protests, Vučić spent more than a year refusing to give the students precisely what they were asking for.

That reversal inevitably produced speculation that, unlike on previous occasions, the President was no longer quite as confident that an election would resolve the crisis in his favour. Vučić himself has never said anything to suggest that he fears losing, and he continues to project confidence in his party’s prospects. But he has also never offered a particularly convincing reason for why a political leader who once reached for snap elections so readily became so reluctant to call one all of a sudden.

This is ultimately why the endless discussion over dates matters. The question is not whether Serbia votes on 18^th October, 25^th October or some later date. It is why elections, once one of Vučić’s favourite tools for consolidating power, suddenly became something he appeared determined to postpone for as long as possible.

There is one potential, and relatively simple answer: he needed time to get his ducks in order, weaken the protests’ momentum, and try to win the public back before going to the polls. And indeed, while Vučić has been reluctant to formally call elections, he has certainly not been reluctant to campaign. Quite the opposite. For months, he has been campaigning in full gear.

He has toured Serbia, met citizens, announced new projects and attempted to address some of the voters’ grievances. He has promised another package of direct financial assistance, including the possibility of cash payments to all adult citizens. In July, Vučić also launched the Ko si bre ti? [Who The Hell Do You Think You Are?] portal, through which citizens can anonymously report public officials for corruption, abuse of office, or unlawful behaviour.

The political purpose is not particularly difficult to understand. The message is that Vučić has heard the public, that he understands why people are angry, and that he will fix the very problems that brought people onto the streets in the first place.

Moreover, by launching the portal, Vučić has reinforced the message that citizens’ grievances are not his fault, but that of other officials whom he intends to hold accountable.

Of course, Vučić’s campaign has also been accompanied by sustained media attacks against the students and virtually anyone associated with the movement, aimed at discrediting the protesters, their demands and, increasingly, their very ability to govern the country.

The same campaigning effort is visible in foreign policy. Vučić has continued doing what he has always done particularly well: maintaining relationships in virtually every direction and presenting himself domestically as the only figure capable of speaking to everyone.

In May, despite the EU’s pressure not to do so, he went to Moscow for the Victory Day parade. That same month, he travelled to China for a state visit with Xi Jinping. He has repeatedly courted the Trump administration and publicly invited President Donald Trump to Serbia on many occasions. In July, to the surprise of many, the European Commission recommended opening Cluster 3 in Serbia’s EU Accession talks, although the move was ultimately blocked by several member states. And, perhaps most strikingly, in August, Vučić hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Belgrade, despite Serbia refusal to impose sanctions on Moscow. All of this has reinforced one of Vučić’s key messages: that he is the only man capable of keeping Serbia on good terms with Beijing, Washington, Brussels, Moscow and now apparently Kyiv simultaneously and at a geopolitically very complex time.

Taken together, Vučić’s strategy becomes fairly obvious: delay the elections for as long as possible, use the extra time to get a head start on campaigning, and call them only once he believes the political tide has turned sufficiently in his favour. This also gives him a considerable advantage once the official campaign begins, as his opponents will only have a few weeks to catch up with what has effectively been his months-long campaign.

The real test will therefore begin when the elections are finally called. The students have demonstrated that they can mobilise hundreds of thousands of people on the streets. They now have to demonstrate that they can turn that mobilisation into votes and defeat a political veteran who has spent more than a decade perfecting the art of winning elections.

As for Vučić, he is set to find out whether the political instrument he once used so effectively to end protests can still save him from the most persistent protest movement of his rule.

Artificial intelligence is becoming part of the machinery of modern markets. Banks, hedge funds and trading firms are using increasingly sophisticated models to identify opportunities, manage risk and execute trades, writes Amir Naser Hojati.

Most discussion focuses on one question: What happens when an AI model gets something wrong?

I think there is another risk.

What happens when many good models reach the same conclusion at the same time?

After roughly 15 years of trading futures, I have learned that markets often become dangerous not because one participant is wrong, but because too many become convinced of the same thing.

As traders sometimes say: when everyone moves to the same side of the boat, start watching the waterline.

Different models, same trade

Financial institutions may believe they are diversified because they use different models, vendors and strategies.

But those systems may still be learning from similar information: price history, volatility, order flow, economic data and news sentiment. They may also be optimizing toward similar goals.

Different models do not need to be identical to produce the same trade.

Several independent systems can simultaneously decide to reduce the same exposure, buy the same asset or hedge the same risk.

That creates hidden dependence.

A market can appear diversified while many supposedly independent systems are reacting to the same information in similar ways.

The real vulnerability may therefore not be one bad model, but the connection between many good ones.

Markets have seen this before

Crowded trades are nothing new.

Portfolio managers react to the same data. Traders watch the same levels. Risk desks cut exposure when volatility rises.

Technology increases the speed of those reactions. AI may also increase their consistency.

Humans disagree, hesitate or sometimes simply choose to do nothing.

Machines are less likely to disagree unless that behaviour is deliberately built into them.

If many models detect the same deterioration in risk and begin reducing exposure simultaneously, individually rational decisions can produce an irrational market outcome.

Each model may be doing exactly what it was designed to do.

The market can still become unstable.

Historical success can be dangerous

A strategy can perform well for years because market conditions remain broadly familiar.

That history creates confidence.

But markets do not owe us tomorrow because something worked yesterday.

One of the most dangerous moments is not when a model is obviously failing, but when it has accumulated enough successful history that people stop questioning its assumptions.

A calm sea can make almost any captain look skilled.

For AI-driven markets, the important question should therefore not only be:

How accurate is this model?

It should also be:

What assumptions does this model share with everyone else's?

More intelligence is not always more resilience

The usual response to model risk is to add more: more data, more parameters, another model, another control.

But resilience does not always come from adding complexity.

Sometimes it comes from removing exposure.

A system may become safer not because it predicts markets more accurately, but because it knows when conditions are unsuitable for taking risk.

That is one of the hardest lessons to translate from discretionary trading into automation.

Finding a trading signal is relatively easy.

Teaching a machine when a valid signal should be ignored is much harder.

Experienced traders know that a setup can look perfectly good and still not deserve capital. The market may be too crowded, liquidity may be changing, or correlations may be breaking down.

Sometimes the best trade is no trade.

Diversity of behaviour matters

Using several different AI models does not necessarily provide diversification if all of them react to stress in the same way.

Real diversification may require different behaviour, not just different architecture.

When should a model refuse to trade?

When should it reduce confidence?

When should it respond more slowly?

And how should it behave when the actions of other models are themselves changing the market?

That matters because financial markets are not ordinary prediction problems.

Predicting the weather does not change the weather.

Predicting a market can change the market because participants act on the prediction.

As more intelligent systems enter that feedback loop, their collective behaviour may become as important as the quality of any individual model.

The next edge may be restraint

Financial institutions will continue building faster and more powerful models.

But I suspect the next competitive advantage will not come only from making machines better at finding trades.

It will also come from making them better at recognizing when everyone else has found the same trade.

Markets have always punished excessive certainty eventually.

AI does not remove that principle. It may simply allow certainty to spread faster.

The smartest trading systems of the next decade may therefore be distinguished not only by how quickly they act, but by something harder to program:

Kknowing when not to join the crowd.

Amir Naser Hojati is a futures trader and fintech entrepreneur with around 15 years of experience in financial markets. His work focuses on algorithmic trading, automated risk management, and AI-driven trading systems.