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Silicon Valley Hedge Fund Takes on Wall Street with AI Trader

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Re: Silicon Valley Hedge Fund Takes on Wall Street with AI Trader

#21
The clickbait headline is amusing, but "Wall Street" has been doing this > 10 years. I'm genuinely not sure if they're trying to "beat wall street" or simply be yet another quantitative hedge fund that happens to use machine learning and neural networks to power their strategies.

Most real electronic trading firms are putting those algorithms in hardware.

Source: Have worked in HFT the past 10 years.

Re: Silicon Valley Hedge Fund Takes on Wall Street with AI Trader

#23
post #21

The clickbait headline is amusing, but "Wall Street" has been doing this > 10 years. I'm genuinely not sure if they're trying to "beat wall street" or simply be yet another quantitative hedge fund that happens to use machine learning and neural networks to power their strategies. Most real electronic trading firms are putting those algorithms in hardware. Source: Have worked in HFT the past 10 years.

Longer than that. This article was passed around at my job to laugh at.

Re: Silicon Valley Hedge Fund Takes on Wall Street with AI Trader

#24
The problem with algorithmic trading is that markets are complex systems. As an algorithm is adopted, it changes the dynamics of the market, and the result the assumptions it was based on tend to no longer hold. Note that humans trade via implicit algorithms, which is part of the reason why consistently outperforming the market is highly unlikely.

In my opinion, the whole idea of investing to try and maximize profits is myopic. The real reason to invest should be to gain a measure of control over the corporation being invested in. This suggests that the board should play a more active role in the governance of corporations.

People who just want to make a buck off a corporation should be limited to providing debt financing.

Re: Silicon Valley Hedge Fund Takes on Wall Street with AI Trader

#25
Can you imagine an investment AI that did not have human biases. Here are some my favorite investor biases:

SALIENCY bias. People remember memorable things. The guy who made $100 million by investing in a Romanian immigrant will invest in you if you're a Romanian immigrant, but not if you're one country over even if their education and politics are the same. Computers don't care.

AVAILABILITY bias. People analyze data that is available. If you have worldwide sales figures your market seems huge. If you no data investors will be strongly prejudiced against it.

CONFIRMATION bias. Investors who have a bubble mentality will see the positive and reinforce their theory, however non-rooted in facts (for example the theory that silicon valley teams will succeed and, for example, foreign teams will fail)

There are a bunch more, too.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

An AI would not suffer from any of these. However, due to the skills required to evaluate a pitch, the AI would have to be much, much smarter than any expert system today. Today you can't even tell a robot how to boil a pot of water (no matter how explicit your verbal description is) or anything else, and have it even come close to succeeding.

We're far away from robots (AI) evaluating pitches and business plans. But how cool would that be!

Re: Silicon Valley Hedge Fund Takes on Wall Street with AI Trader

#27
post #21

The clickbait headline is amusing, but "Wall Street" has been doing this > 10 years. I'm genuinely not sure if they're trying to "beat wall street" or simply be yet another quantitative hedge fund that happens to use machine learning and neural networks to power their strategies. Most real electronic trading firms are putting those algorithms in hardware. Source: Have worked in HFT the past 10 years.

HFT is a different kind of 'beating the market', though, don't you think?

Re: Silicon Valley Hedge Fund Takes on Wall Street with AI Trader

#29
post #13

I just checked out glassdoor, and it seems like they don't know what their product should be since top execs don't want to agree on anything. > We have too many executives for a company this size - most don't add much value except for fighting with each other and politicizing issues. The CEO lives in HongKong and remotely manages this crew of distrusting, non-supportive and close-minded execs. The HR function is prac…

I mean sure, but take glassdoor with a huge grain of salt, people make up crap to post on there all the time.

Re: Silicon Valley Hedge Fund Takes on Wall Street with AI Trader

#30
post #26

Huh, hasn't wallstreet being doing this, and even putting these things into FPGA's for nearly a decade now? Hell I wouldn't be surprised if they're printing ASICs with their algos.

Other than trading on news, you really don't need that kind of speed for using ML powered algos. Generally these rely on a ton of data so GPUs still reign king.

But yes, hedge funds and prop shops have been doing this for over a decade.

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