Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Financial Statement Analysis with Large Language Models

papers.ssrn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 219 posts

Re: Financial Statement Analysis with Large Language Models

#41

Post by vsuperpower2020 »

m463 wrote: post #26
apwell23 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> citizens to ask meaningful questions about the finances of their local government. is there a demand for this. I live in cook country. I really don't want to ask these questions. Not sure what I get out of asking these questions other than anger and frustration.

if all the citizens can ask these questions, I think it will make a difference. and of course, the follow-up questions. Like who.

Then anything you plan is doomed from the start. If companies start slipping cyanide into their food it would take at least 20 years for people to stop buying it. Getting everyone to simply do your thing while they're busy with their own life is a fool's errand.

Re: Financial Statement Analysis with Large Language Models

#42

Post by tchalla »

primitivesuave wrote: post #13

The area where I see this making the most transformational change is by enabling average citizens to ask meaningful questions about the finances of their local government. In Cook County, Illinois, there are hundreds of local municipalities and elected authorities, all of which are producing monthly financial statements. There is not enough citizen oversight and rarely any media attention except in the most egregious…

It’s your assumption that the lack of oversight is because of too much information. How will you validate that hypothesis before you invest in a solution?

Re: Financial Statement Analysis with Large Language Models

#43

Post by lucianbr »

nicce wrote: post #22

What will happen if everyone starts using heavy statistical methods or LLMs to predict stocks prices? And buys stock based on them? Will it absolutely make everything unpredictable? Edit: assuming that they initially provide good predictions

Isn't it already unpredictable? That is why nobody outperforms indices. And utterly irrational, which is again both expected and seen. This must be why Tesla continues to have a huge market value - Elon knows how to excite the LLMs. :)

Re: Financial Statement Analysis with Large Language Models

#44

Post by andsoitis »

SavageBeast wrote: post #36
bossyTeacher wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People didn't stop working on this in 1989 - they realised they can make lots of money doing it and do it privately. Mind elaborating?

Speaking for myself and likely others with similar motivations, yes we can "figure it out" and publish something to show our work and expand the field of endeavor with our findings - OR - we can figure something profitable out on our own and use our own funds to trade our strategies with our own accounts. Anyone who has figured out something relatively profitable isn't telling anyone how they did it.

> Anyone who has figured out something relatively profitable isn't telling anyone how they did it.

Corollary: someone who is selling you tools or strategies on how to make tons and tons of money, is probably not making tons and tons of money employing said tools and strategies, but instead making their money by having you buy their advice.

Re: Financial Statement Analysis with Large Language Models

#45

Post by berkes »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #30
primitivesuave wrote: post #13

The area where I see this making the most transformational change is by enabling average citizens to ask meaningful questions about the finances of their local government. In Cook County, Illinois, there are hundreds of local municipalities and elected authorities, all of which are producing monthly financial statements. There is not enough citizen oversight and rarely any media attention except in the most egregious…

The citizens ask LLMs (or more advanced future AIs) to identify if government finances are being used efficiently, and if there is evidence of corruption. The corrupt government officers then start using the AIs to try to cover up the evidence of their crimes in the financial statements. The AI possibly putting the skills of high-end and expensive human accountants (or better) into the hands of local governments. Who…

> Who wins this attrition war?

The AI companies. Double. People paying to use their products. But mostly by gaining a lot of leverage and power.

Re: Financial Statement Analysis with Large Language Models

#46

Post by berkes »

surfingdino wrote: post #28
nicce wrote: post #22

What will happen if everyone starts using heavy statistical methods or LLMs to predict stocks prices? And buys stock based on them? Will it absolutely make everything unpredictable? Edit: assuming that they initially provide good predictions

HFT guys won't touch GPT. The stakes are too high. If LLMs could give those guys an edge they'd be all over this tech.

Or rather: If LLMs could give those guys an edge, there's no way they'd share their edge-giving LLMs with anyone, least of all their competition and the plebs.

Re: Financial Statement Analysis with Large Language Models

#47

Post by nicce »

infecto wrote: post #27
nicce wrote: post #22

What will happen if everyone starts using heavy statistical methods or LLMs to predict stocks prices? And buys stock based on them? Will it absolutely make everything unpredictable? Edit: assuming that they initially provide good predictions

This has already been a thing since the late 80s.

It hasn't been accurate enough to be meaningful, nor enough data.

Re: Financial Statement Analysis with Large Language Models

#48

Post by ecjhdnc2025 »

foota wrote: post #37
_se wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not a benefit. If you use a tool like this to try to compete with sophisticated actors (e.g. all major firms in the capital markets space) you will lose every time.

We come up with all sorts of things that are initially a step backwards, but that lead to eventual improvement. The first cars were slower than horses. That's not to suggest that Renaissance is going to start using Chat GPT tomorrow, but maybe in a few years they'll be using fine tuned versions of LLMs in addition to whatever they're doing today. Even if it's not going to compete with the state of the art models for…

Far too much in the way of "maybe in a few years" LLM prediction relies on the unspoken assumption that there will not be any gains in the state of the art in the existing, non-LLM tools.

"In a few years" you'd have the benefit of the current, bespoke tools, plus all the work you've put into improving them in the meantime.

And the LLM would still be behind, unless you believe that at some point in the future, a radically better solution will simply emerge from the model.

That is, the bet is that at some point, magic emerges from the machine that renders all domain-specialist tooling irrelevant, and one or two general AI companies can hoover up all sorts of areas of specialism. And in the meantime, they get all the investment money.

Why is it that we wouldn't trust a generalist over a specialist in any walk of life, but in AI we expect one day to be able to?

Re: Financial Statement Analysis with Large Language Models

#49

Post by SavageBeast »

andsoitis wrote: post #44
SavageBeast wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking for myself and likely others with similar motivations, yes we can "figure it out" and publish something to show our work and expand the field of endeavor with our findings - OR - we can figure something profitable out on our own and use our own funds to trade our strategies with our own accounts. Anyone who has figured out something relatively profitable isn't telling anyone how they did it.

> Anyone who has figured out something relatively profitable isn't telling anyone how they did it. Corollary: someone who is selling you tools or strategies on how to make tons and tons of money, is probably not making tons and tons of money employing said tools and strategies, but instead making their money by having you buy their advice.

Absolutely correct - and more over - when you do sit someone down (in my case, someone with a "superior education" in finance compared to my CS degree) and explain things to them, they simply don't understand it at all and assume you're crazy because you're not doing what they were taught in Biz School.

Re: Financial Statement Analysis with Large Language Models

#50

Post by BobaFloutist »

andsoitis wrote: post #44
SavageBeast wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking for myself and likely others with similar motivations, yes we can "figure it out" and publish something to show our work and expand the field of endeavor with our findings - OR - we can figure something profitable out on our own and use our own funds to trade our strategies with our own accounts. Anyone who has figured out something relatively profitable isn't telling anyone how they did it.

> Anyone who has figured out something relatively profitable isn't telling anyone how they did it. Corollary: someone who is selling you tools or strategies on how to make tons and tons of money, is probably not making tons and tons of money employing said tools and strategies, but instead making their money by having you buy their advice.

I think I could probably make more money selling a tool or strategy that consistently, reliably makes ~2% more than government bonds than I could make off it myself, with my current capital.
Post reply on HN