Live data from Hacker News

AI financial advice is surprisingly good, especially if you ask right questions

mitsloan.mit.edu

311–320 of 443 posts

Re: AI financial advice is surprisingly good, especially if you ask right questions

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An advisor gives you emotional support and helps you not fuck it up.

The problem with giving financial advice to people is that many struggle to pay their rent. Telling them to invest in index funds from an ivory tower is laughably misguided of the realistic situation they live in. After they pay their rent and feed themselves, they may have a little left over which they will simply spend on basic pleasures, or simply rack up debt to get by. The financial advice ignores the fact that…

The EFF: "Uyghurs in China can use PGP to protect their communications from the government."

Some Uyghur in China: "There's a government representative who lives in my house and watches over my shoulder whenever I use technology."

Re: AI financial advice is surprisingly good, especially if you ask right questions

#313

AI seems to struggle most when it has to make decisions with lots of trade-offs, especially where the context or implications of various decisions are nested, which is presumably why it struggles to write full software systems that are well-designed. By comparison, financial advice is pretty simple, and there is a universally agreed-upon approach that most people should follow to maximize long-term financial health.

There is a universally agreed-upon approach, but is it actually correct? Usually, investing in the thing that people have invested in for the last 20 years is a good way to buy at the top.

That’s why that’s not the standard advice. It’s index stocks hedged with bonds. If you manage to buy at the “top” of your entire country’s economy, you’ve got bigger problems at that point.

Re: AI financial advice is surprisingly good, especially if you ask right questions

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with giving financial advice to people is that many struggle to pay their rent. Telling them to invest in index funds from an ivory tower is laughably misguided of the realistic situation they live in. After they pay their rent and feed themselves, they may have a little left over which they will simply spend on basic pleasures, or simply rack up debt to get by. The financial advice ignores the fact that…

>The problem with giving financial advice to people is that many struggle to pay their rent. If you're struggling to pay rent... Your quality of life is too high and you need to reduce it. Straight up. This isn't a wealth inequality issue, it's a "you're overspending" issue.

It's illegal to be homeless.

Re: AI financial advice is surprisingly good, especially if you ask right questions

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re a layman investor just dump all of your shit in index funds. Even if you’re smart and sophisticated, you’re still competing against the massive amount of fraudulent insider trading happening right now with zero enforcement and are trading at a disadvantage as a result

I think you're missing the point why younger people do that. Real wages have been deteriorating over the years. It's much more difficult to afford a house today than it was 50 years ago. People are perfectly aware that investing into index funds is the "correct" approach, however it does not solve anything for them. They're desperate and for them _to gamble_ seems like the only way to become decently rich allowing to…

Yes. You used to start at -1000 points and earn 5000 over your life. With investment and luck you could make that 10000 and end up at +9000.

Now you start at -9000 and earn 3000. With investment and luck you could make that 6000 and end up at -3000 so that's still a guaranteed loss. To have any hope of hitting the positives at all, you need to excessively gamble. Sure you could end up at -999999 (which is no worse than 0) but also +999999.

Re: AI financial advice is surprisingly good, especially if you ask right questions

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a universally agreed-upon approach, but is it actually correct? Usually, investing in the thing that people have invested in for the last 20 years is a good way to buy at the top.

That’s why that’s not the standard advice. It’s index stocks hedged with bonds. If you manage to buy at the “top” of your entire country’s economy, you’ve got bigger problems at that point.

Buying after any previous crash, instead of before, gave you 10-20 years of extra retirement. If you waited 10 years in cash for a crash before going all-in, you came out ahead.

Re: AI financial advice is surprisingly good, especially if you ask right questions

#317

AI seems to struggle most when it has to make decisions with lots of trade-offs, especially where the context or implications of various decisions are nested, which is presumably why it struggles to write full software systems that are well-designed. By comparison, financial advice is pretty simple, and there is a universally agreed-upon approach that most people should follow to maximize long-term financial health.

There is a universally agreed-upon approach, but is it actually correct? Usually, investing in the thing that people have invested in for the last 20 years is a good way to buy at the top.

IIRC, "Buy index funds. The end."

Re: AI financial advice is surprisingly good, especially if you ask right questions

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an exciting life you got there! Enjoy your sad and lonely retirement

Not sure what that means. I own a couple classic cars and a house, work 60 hours a month, travel for fun most of the time. Lived in 12 countries in the last 20 years. Have a great girlfriend and a great ex who I get along with. But I don't waste money on rims, shoes or clothes. And tonight I made rice and lentils, because my credit card bill this month was $8k and I only made $15k. It's actually more exciting if you…

Sounds great!

Re: AI financial advice is surprisingly good, especially if you ask right questions

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Investing and trading is a dynamic game. If everyone has the edge of certain portfolio to out perform the average, then no one has the edge. Similarly AI is not going to solve that. Because everyone would end up with similar AI edge until no one has the edge. People should start with simple universal rules: Stay invested. Buy low cost diversified etf fund. Favor long term investment instead of trading. Learn somethin…

When everyone is crowding into one investment that investment tends to get irrationally over-saturated. With the current makeup of the S&P500 we can predict it will dramatically crash in real value in the next five years.

That’s why the classic investment advice is to hedge your exposure to the equities markets, do more so the closer you get to retirement and don’t put money you need in the next 7 years in equities.

The bigger concern with the classic advice is that bonds have become more correlated with equities and our backtesting was all done during a time period where the American liberal international economic system was dominant so we aren’t sure that it will hold up to the new partitioned order.

Re: AI financial advice is surprisingly good, especially if you ask right questions

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The problem with giving financial advice to people is that many struggle to pay their rent. If you're struggling to pay rent... Your quality of life is too high and you need to reduce it. Straight up. This isn't a wealth inequality issue, it's a "you're overspending" issue.

It's illegal to be homeless.

It's not.

Regardless i sincerely doubt people in that situation are taking up the least expensive option available.

Post reply on HN