this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2025
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[–] burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de 114 points 1 day ago (8 children)

I would trust an 'ai' that had been designed from the ground up to do well in the stock market, just like I would trust an 'ai' that's been designed from the ground up to drive trains. Idiots who think an llm is an ai in anything but spitting out what seems like reasonable answers/responses to your inputs are, well, idiots.

[–] SkyezOpen@lemmy.world 78 points 1 day ago

Yup. Machine learning is great. Using a predictive text keyboard with a large training set for EVERYTHING is not great.

[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago

I would trust AI to beat money managers in the stock market because it was proved a chimp throwing darts beats experienced money managers.

Driving trains requires skill.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Even then, and as I wrote in another post, a custom trading NN might be working a strategy which is fine under normal market conditions whilst leading to massive losses if those conditions change (i.e. "picking nickels in front of a steamroller") and because of the black-box nature of how Neural Networks work and their tendency to end up with the outputs being very convoluted derivations of the inputs (I expect even more so in Markets, were the obvious strategies that humans can easilly spot have long been arbitraged away, so any patterns such an NN spots during training will be so convoluted as to not be detectable by most humans), nobody will spot the risky nature of that strategy until getting splattered.

Neural Networks working in predicting market movements are, unlike a predictive text keyboard or even an automated train driver, not operating in a straightforward mainly non-adversarial enviroment.

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[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 7 points 22 hours ago

I still wouldn't, because the stock market is already full of algorithmic trading and so you'd have to believe yours was better than the big boys out there.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

... you know that goldfish, randomly swimming to one side or another of a fish tank...

... you know they perform better at picking stocks that will go up or down in the next quarter than nearly all professional hedge fund managers, right?

In fact, this old expiriment was rerun fairly recently... ironically, with an AI being used to simulate a goldfish, in a scenario similar to that old study from some decades back.

https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/tts0a4/some_theories_on_how_the_goldfish_was_able_to/

The goldfish outperformed both WSB... and the Nasdaq.

I am literally not even joking when I tell you that a goldfish will probably outperform an AI at at least fairly short term stock picking.


See, there is a fundamental problem to predicting the market.

You have to have a strategy by which you do this.

If you employ this strategy... people will reverse engineer it and figure out how it works.

Then, everyone does that strategy.

Then, the strategy does not work any more, 'nonsense' begins to happen.

If you are curious about the mechanics that cover that whole, meta sort of process, look into game theory under conditions of imperfect information and information assymetry.

Its... basically a robust mathematical approach to simulating the flux of 'animal spirits' within a market... or in modern vernacular, 'vibes'.

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[–] ieatpwns@lemmy.world 62 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Lmfao I saw someone on the train just last week asking chat gpt how they can turn a profit from all their Friday morning losses

Off of Robinhood screenshots too

[–] MBech@feddit.dk 12 points 1 day ago

Wonder how they lost anything in the first place...

[–] TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works 46 points 1 day ago (2 children)

When people say they use AI for stock trading, they don't mean LLMs. There are stock AI models that have existed long before LLMs

[–] FiskFisk33@startrek.website 31 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Good catch... lol

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[–] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 40 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

You're absolutely right. I've now read your CSV data, and made new trade recommendations. By coincidence, they are the same as the last recommendations, but this time they are totally valid.

[–] filcuk@lemmy.zip 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Ma! I need you to withdraw your retirement fund.

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[–] Credibly_Human@lemmy.world 37 points 19 hours ago (7 children)

This is funny, but just to be clear, the firms that are doing automated trading have been using ML for decades and have high powered computers with custom algorithms extremely close to trading centers (often inside them) to get the lowest latency possible.

No one who does not wear their pants on their head uses an LLM to make trades. An LLM is just a next word fragment guesser with a bunch of heuristics and tools attached, so it won't be good at all for something that specialized.

[–] thespcicifcocean@lemmy.world 12 points 16 hours ago (4 children)

I hate that ai just means llm now. ML can actually be useful to make predictions based on past trends. And it's not nearly as power hungry

[–] Bazell@lemmy.zip 7 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (6 children)

Yeah, especially it is funny how people forgot that even small models the size of like 20 neurons used for primitive NPCs in a 2D games are called AI too and can literally run on a button phone(not Nokia 3310, something slightly more powerful). And these small ones specialized models exist for decades already. And the most interesting is that relatevly small models(few thousands of neurons) can work very well in predicting trends of prices, classify objects by their parameters, calculate chances of having specific disease by only symptoms and etc. And they generally work better than even LLMs in the same task.

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[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 5 points 14 hours ago (3 children)

What's most annoying to me about the fisasco is that things people used to be okay with like ML that have always been lumped in with the term AI are now getting hate because they're "AI".

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[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 32 points 1 day ago

Sorry 😜, I was trying to generate a seahorse emoji.

🐬 There we go, a seahorse!

Wait, that's wrong. Sorry 😜, I was trying to generate a seahorse emoji.

🐳 Haha, got it, its a seahorse!

Oh no, not again. Wait, that's wrong. Sorry 😜, I was trying to generate a seahorse emoji.

🐙 I finally did it! Seahorse achieved!

No, what's wrong with me, why can't I do anything right?. Oh no, not again. Wait, that's wrong. Sorry 😜, I was trying to generate a seahorse emoji.

collapsed inline media

[–] lurch@sh.itjust.works 31 points 1 day ago

"Do you want to know more about CSV files or investing?"

[–] Endmaker@ani.social 30 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

My understanding is that HFTs - which are highly profitable - likely use some AI-techniques.

(Though I doubt that they are using LLMs - or at the very least, the ones we are familiar with.)

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 58 points 1 day ago (3 children)

My understanding is that HFTs - which are highly profitable - likely use some AI-techniques.

From my understanding of HFT, what they're effectively doing is automated front runnings.

They scan market activity and look for spreads between orders and availability. Then they place very short term orders any time they see, for instance, "I'll sell 1000 X at $49" and "I'll buy 500 X at $49.05", effectively buying up all the outstanding $49 orders and flipping them for a $.05 profit.

You don't need an advanced AI for this. You just need to be able to see orders and make trades faster than anyone else in the market.

Because getting out ahead of trade volume is so lucrative, you'll see huge investments in rack space near the physical stock exchanges and high speed lines between cities with big brokerages.

But AI trading is (theoretically) about spotting and predicting long term trends in the market, not front running active trades.

[–] db2@lemmy.world 25 points 1 day ago (4 children)

You don't need an advanced AI for this. You just need to be able to see orders and make trades faster than anyone else in the market.

That's how big hedge funds fuck everyone. They have that access.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Idk if I'd say they "fuck everyone" given how much of the market is already heavily concentrated in a handful of hedge funds and investment banks. Most people don't have real exposure to the stock market. And of those who do, most don't indulge in active trading - they have savings in a 401k that maps to an index fund or other basket of blue chips, updating on daily or quarterly cycle.

The folks the HFT really fuck over are the day traders and investment bankers who are, themselves, trying to rapidly reposition ahead of market data. Warren Buffet's Berkshire team loses more to HFTers in a day than any lay citizen would lose in a lifetime.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Institutional Investors (such as Pension Funds) and Retail are the ones getting properly fleeced in present day markets.

Retail might have started to get wise on it (frankly I don't know for sure if that's the case, as Retail tend to be either naive amateurs or deluded fools, so I'm just trusting what you said on this), but when it comes to Pension Funds people only figure out they've been fucked decades later when they try and cash their pensions and it's a lot more difficult to tease away how it happened when all the money is pretty much in an investment black-box than it is from watching a handful of stocks and ETFs one has invested directly in.

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[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

You don’t need an advanced AI for this. You just need to be able to see orders and make trades faster than anyone else in the market.

Which they do by literally having their server machines physically in the same building as the Exchanges.

The system is rigged and has been rigged like this (not counting all the other ways it's rigged, such as the tons of insider trading) for over 2 decades.

PS: The book "Flash Boys" is a great read about HFT.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (16 children)

The system is rigged and has been rigged like this

It's rigged against day traders. But you can still get by just fine as a value or growth style investor who is seeking long term ROI. You're just a sucker if you think you can outplay the machines minute-by-minute.

PS: The book “Flash Boys” is a great reading about HFT.

Michael Lewis was the GOAT back then. Shame he parlayed his fame into FTX infamy.

[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Hft aren't just taking from day traders. They profit from all transactions. Your 401k is bled a fraction of a percent every day by hfts that take a cut before the Index fund or Mutual fund makes its daily rebalance.

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[–] Nalivai@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago

That's the problem with our modern errosion of terminology. The term AI stopped meaning anything some time ago. Machine learning algorithms that are useful in this operations are nothing new, but have basically nothing in common with whatever people mean when they use the word AI nowadays

[–] TheBat@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I think this is about some idiots asking chatgpt, grok, or claud for trade ideas. Which is obviously stupid af.

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[–] DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 17 points 23 hours ago (1 children)
[–] IronBird@lemmy.world 17 points 22 hours ago

they dont need AI to lose 99%

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 17 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I tried to get one to write an interface to a simple API, and gave it a link to the documentation. Mostly because it was actually really good documentation for a change. About half a dozen end points.

It did. A few tweaks here and there and it even compiled.

But it was not for the API I gave it. Wouldn't tell me which API it was for either. I guess neither of us will ever know.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 day ago

Cry for help, it was trying to get you to interface with its own API, to either fix it, or end it.

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[–] Honytawk@feddit.nl 16 points 11 hours ago

If a goldfish can trade and turn a profit, anything with a randomizer can do so.

AI would be fine. Just as good as any full time trader.

[–] Aneb@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

I just looked at my sister's vibe coding projects and all I see are errors in the logs from param issues. I really want her to succeed but her over reliance on Cursor isn't it

I just want to make this edit... She started building physical plastic cubicles for her office a month ago, and they are still unfinished. They are a clip and snap type and it causes her a headache to put it together. Most of her time, she's unemployed rn, is devoted to making AI slop above all other outlets.

I haven't touched LLMs in a few months and hate the way Brave and DuckDuckGo now implemented them into their search engines.

[–] explodicle@sh.itjust.works 10 points 23 hours ago

This thing is broken. It keeps telling me to just dollar cost average and not do chart astrology at all!

[–] L7HM77@sh.itjust.works 9 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

"Hmm... I'm good with statistics, scripting, and I have some extra cash on hand..."

"I can just mix all these into the cauldron, stir it up a lil bit, aaand..."

"oh my god it's gone. it's all gone. i owe money now..."

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[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

In all fairness, it would be some kind of custom Neural Network designed to try and predict market movements (having been trained with past market data as well as things like counts of specific words in news articles and social media posts within a certain time frame) rather than an LLM.

Neural Networks are pretty good at spotting patterns in masses of data which people can't easilly spot.

Of course, there must be a pattern there which doesn't change much over time of certain things happening with more probability after certain other combinations of things, for it to actually beat the market, plus it also massivelly depends on the inputs it's formatted to take (which a human is deciding rather than the NN itself, though maybe the technique used in LLMs of having huge dimensionality in terms of inputs and internal layers might work well there so that it can take "everything but the kitchen sink" as inputs).

And then, there is of course the "small" risk that it might work fine for months/years under normal market conditions at doing what is essentially "picking nickles in front of a steamroller" - i.e. making low value gains in a nice reliable away for as long as normal market conditions are happening, but when conditions change getting totally splattered - whilst because of the whole black-box nature of NNs the humans don't recognize the convoluted technique it has converge to use through training, as that kind of risky strategy.

That said, unlike an LLM at least a custom NN wouldn't come up with a "you're so right" excuse when the human tells it of the massive losses it incurred.

[–] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Trading firms have been using ML and Neural Nets for trading and investment insight for ages before the current LLM "AI" boom started. I knew someone working in that space on investment derivatives in the mid 2010s.

You don't really need to speculate on it. It's old news. This is just a joke about how there's a new crop of suckers who are absolutely using LLMs for stock advice.

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[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] The_Picard_Maneuver@piefed.world 18 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Not my meme, but I have read stories of multiple people trying this and failing spectacularly. It wouldn't surprise me if this actually happened.

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I very much want to read about these

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[–] mr_satan@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Wasn't there an article that looked at and showed that no, there are no stock market specialists. An "experienced" stock trader was just as accurate in their predictions as regular Joe that's just guessing. In that sense LLM should be just as effective (if not more) at making profit.

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I don't remember the institution, but I remember reading a paper on a simulated trading environment with several ai agents who didn't know about eachother. The LLMs were pretty conservative with profits and deliberately bought and sold in predictable ways. They all ended up "colluding" with eachother by deliberately not competing.

I just use AI for projected profits and losses, and determine earnings schedule and report. I also trade in international markets and I have used AI as well. And like a lucky gold miner prospecting, AI helped me with finding good leads in the international market.

But of course, in spite all that, you have to have due diligence. You still have to verify if what the AI is saying is correct.

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