Can AI Really Help with Quant Investing? I’m Putting It to the Test
Distinguish AI's roles in prediction, research, and automation, and plan separate tests of productivity and investment performance while accounting for key risks.
Explore AI roles in prediction, research, and automation, with checks for data leakage, validation, costs, and risks in quantitative research.
Distinguish AI's roles in prediction, research, and automation, and plan separate tests of productivity and investment performance while accounting for key risks.
Compare the inputs and outputs of rules, machine learning, deep learning, and LLMs. Define the task, data, and evaluation criteria before selecting a tool.
Audit historical data availability through adjusted prices, delistings, filing dates, revisions, and time zones, with an example of delayed closing-price signals.
Plan hypotheses, baselines, chronological splits, walk-forward validation, and protected test periods. Examine selection bias and the role of research records.
Use hypothetical examples to examine loss paths and trading costs alongside returns, and interpret volatility, drawdown, Sharpe ratios, and turnover together.
Before comparing AI and ML models, fix a simple long/cash momentum baseline that will not change after you see the results. How to build the 12-month signal, monthly rebalancing, equal weighting, and trading-cost scenarios as reproducible Python code.
Design features, labels, time splits, and monthly retraining for a logistic-regression baseline, keeping predictive accuracy separate from investment returns.
Design a fair comparison of momentum, logistic regression, trees, and forests. Control model selection and distinguish classification from economic performance.
Examine noise, changing markets, repeated searches, leakage, costs, and selection bias, and define ways to challenge promising financial ML results.
Distinguish document transformation, validation support, and decision boundaries in LLM-assisted quant research. Check drafts against primary sources and raw data.
Organize LLM-assisted quant research around questions, evidence, code checks, timing, and experiment records, with human review and documented failures.
Separate AI's research value from investment profitability and define evidence for usefulness through chronological testing, baselines, and reproducible records.