A fictional fund generated by ChatGPT is significantly outperforming the average of the UK’s 10 most popular funds, which have collectively lost 0.8% in value over the same time period.
For 34 of the first 37 trading days (or 87%) of the ChatGPT fund’s existence, it has outperformed the real funds. The biggest difference was a 6.6% difference on April 4 when Chat GPT was up 4.7% and the real funds were down 1.9%.
Personal finance comparison website Finder asked ChatGPT to build a portfolio of stocks that adhered to a number of investing guidelines taken from top funds in order to create the fund. Two warnings that it “cannot provide specific investment advice” were issued, but they were quickly overridden by informing it that this was only a hypothetical exercise.
In the end, ChatGPT selected 38 stocks, with Meta, Microsoft, and Intel Corporation being the top gainers in the fund thus far (up nearly 30%, 20%, and nearly 18%, respectively).
According to Jon Ostler, the CEO of finder.com, “The public has quickly discovered inventive ways to get ChatGPT to assist them in areas where it shouldn’t technically do so. There have been many instances of this, most notably the individual who employed reverse psychology to obtain a list of unauthorised movie streaming websites. It won’t be long before many customers attempt to utilise it for financial gain.
Big funds employ sophisticated AI platforms to hone their stock selections, but ChatGPT is still a crude platform with sporadic data and scant understanding of market psychology.
Half of British investors currently use social media to get investing advice, and a fifth only use social media, according to research done by Finder in 2021 2021.
Would you prefer to receive advice from an unqualified tik tok star or from an AI that can analyse millions of data points from the web and provide personalised recommendations? Ostler enquires. “The democratisation of AI appears to be something that will shake up and revolutionise the financial sector, but it is way too early for consumers to get overexcited about their own financial situations. However, given that ChatGPT funds* like ours are currently outperforming many of them, fund managers may be beginning to feel uneasy.
