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

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

#431

Post by Kirby64 »

jjav wrote: post #422
throw0101a wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is controversial but very bad advice. No index funds, by their nature, will ever match the return of high-flying company stocks. Sticking with index funds is very good advice: * https://ofdollarsanddata.com/why-you-shouldnt-pick-individua... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Random_Walk_Down_Wall_Street > After about three decades investing, I can say that more than 95% of my returns are from just a small hand…

> Sticking with index funds is very good advice: Believe what you like, I'm cool with that. I have many Wall Street friends who are aligned with your approach, so you are in good company. My returns over the last 30 years obliterate their returns, because turns out investing in high flying companies will have much better returns than an index fund. You do you.

> My returns over the last 30 years obliterate their returns, because turns out investing in high flying companies will have much better returns than an index fund. You do you.

Only if you gamble correctly. And the '50-100x returns' you cite elsewhere are really hampered by a bunch of duds that lose money. Generic index fund would return ~1700% in 30 years. That basically means you have to pick right 16-33% of the time. That math just doesn't work out.

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

#432

Post by Kirby64 »

noduerme wrote: post #298
MattyRad wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually had a great session with Gemini pushing back on the "Max 401k" advice. Summarized in my own words: - Why would I contribute tons more to my already decent 401k? If anything, I want to pull from it. I refuse to diminish the peak years of me and my family's life together just to be wealthy when I'm old and alone. - that's a good point, but know you'll pay tax on top of 10% - well I would have paid tax anyway…

You're missing the whole point of IRAs. You said: >> well I would have paid tax anyway if I just saved it The point is that as long as your money is in the IRA you can earn interest or buy stocks, sell for a profit, over and over and not pay any taxes on your gains in between . Imagine you have $100k in a normal trading account and $100k in an IRA. You make the same trades in both and both are up $20k at the end of t…

> You're missing the whole point of IRAs.

I think you're missing the point of IRAs too. The primary point of IRAs is that you can defer taxes from a time when you have high taxes (your working years), to a period of when you can have low taxes (retirement). That's it. Being able to trade stocks within an IRA is a side benefit. Another side benefit is no taxes on things like dividends inside your IRA. Those are not the primary benefit.

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

#433

Post by foxtrot8672 »

daf72 wrote: post #21
dmix wrote: post #5

I use YNAB ( https://www.ynab.com/ ) for budgeting so I already had all of my financial data in a single source. Exporting the CSVs locally and asking Claude to be my financial advisor legitimately gave me good advice. Not just nagging me to save more (which is always useful), but how to organize my budget categories better, detecting longer term spending patterns I wasn't thinking much about, researching credit card…

Nice idea! Do you mind sharing the prompt you used, interested in trying this out myself.

[flagged]

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

#434

Post by kristofferR »

thomaslord wrote: post #412
Terr_ wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>YNAB I've fallen behind on keeping it up-to-date, but I feel I ought to plug anything self-hostable: https://actualbudget.org/

This is the big pain-point for me with self-hosted budgeting software. The corporate players in the space can jump through the security hoops and integrate with Plaid, but if I wanted to automatically pull my own data into the single-user budgeting tool I host entirely on my own network I need to pass the same security checks as a full-on fintech startup. Currently I enter transactions manually, but manually reviewin…

I built my own financial dashboard and used Enable Banking Accounts API, it's free to use for such limited usage, and they support most European banks at least.

https://enablebanking.com/accounts-api/

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

#435

Post by liamwire »

Terr_ wrote: post #415
thomaslord wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the big pain-point for me with self-hosted budgeting software. The corporate players in the space can jump through the security hoops and integrate with Plaid, but if I wanted to automatically pull my own data into the single-user budgeting tool I host entirely on my own network I need to pass the same security checks as a full-on fintech startup. Currently I enter transactions manually, but manually reviewin…

If I had my 'druthers there would be legal rules around the rights of customers to access their information, using an API key limited to reading past/pending transaction data. I suppose an extra-paranoia feature might be letting people set a salt value for any data which is too sensitive to release but it needs to be present for comparison/sync purposes.

I'm grateful that this is possible via Up bank here in Australia. Webhooks push the data through a free-tier Worker on Cloudflare and into YNAB within a second of the transaction going through. Full updates across pending/cleared and deleted transactions too. I’ve had this running for 18 months now and it's been a dream.

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

#436

Post by hypercube33 »

foxtrot8672 wrote: post #354
hypercube33 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I look forward to more models like this but don't take this the wrong way, I'm not touching this with a 10 foot pole unless it's running locally on my private hardware.

I see. Do you not trust the cloud, the data storage layer, or is it the AI model itself?

Specifically, yes to all of the above but only with things such as this (financial data) since it's basically a commodity. Entire markets exist around personal data like this for credit and advertising.

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

#437

Post by foxtrot8672 »

thomaslord wrote: post #412
Terr_ wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>YNAB I've fallen behind on keeping it up-to-date, but I feel I ought to plug anything self-hostable: https://actualbudget.org/

This is the big pain-point for me with self-hosted budgeting software. The corporate players in the space can jump through the security hoops and integrate with Plaid, but if I wanted to automatically pull my own data into the single-user budgeting tool I host entirely on my own network I need to pass the same security checks as a full-on fintech startup. Currently I enter transactions manually, but manually reviewin…

Try our app, Pendragon (https://pendragon.foxtrotcommunications.net), and get started with simple expense analysis right away. Easily add your accounts via Plaid or even just a simple csv upload.

We go far beyond a simply budgeting app by providing a solution for your entire financial life. We look at your finances holistically and make judgements that you can rely on.

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

#438

Post by foxtrot8672 »

hypercube33 wrote: post #436
foxtrot8672 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see. Do you not trust the cloud, the data storage layer, or is it the AI model itself?

Specifically, yes to all of the above but only with things such as this (financial data) since it's basically a commodity. Entire markets exist around personal data like this for credit and advertising.

[dead]

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

#439

Post by JKCalhoun »

dosisking wrote: post #225
JKCalhoun wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Here is what better advice looks like: don't buy/sell any securities unless you, personally, know exactly how and why you're going to profit from it." For people like Warren Buffett, that's his full-time job—figuring out how and why he is going to profit. Me? I'm not going to know shit, so I will "3. Never buy or sell an individual security." "…save your money and invest in one or more proven, profitable, Great Depr…

> I'm curious where the safe harbors were during the Great Depression. I've asked before and have not received an answer. The people who were in cash bought land for pennies on the dollar and made a fortune.

Cash kept in their mattresses.

(Because of course the banks went under and the cash with it.)

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

#440

Post by calmbonsai »

oezi wrote: post #246
calmbonsai wrote: post #66

AI, atm, is a perfect distillation of financial platitudes from ~10 years ago. FWIW, bonds are no longer a hedge against equity unless they’re based against private equity and private equity is both more expensive and more performant than ever.

Yes, the preference for bonds seems deeply ingrained. Have you found a way to steer LLMs away from old school allocation (bonds, gold, cash)?

I have not. I've also noticed that despite changes in regulation in the U.S., a whole variety of P.E. strategies are completely ignored by LLMs.
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