Enterprising Investor
Practical analysis for investment professionals
15 January 2019

Big Data and Artificial Intelligence in Investment Management: FAQs and Answers

A technological advance can impact — even transform — the global economy let alone a particular sector.

The steam engine in the first industrial revolution, electricity in the second, and internet technology in the third fundamentally changed human history.  Today, big data and artificial intelligence (AI) have the same transformative potential.

When it comes to big data and AI in investment management, some people anticipate a rosy future with various new sources of alpha. Others worry about the jobs that might be lost to machines through process automation.

Regarding the new sources of alpha, developments in this fourth industrial revolution raise a series of critical questions. How investment professionals address them will go a long way in determining who will successfully adapt and who might be rendered obsolete.

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. By using big data and AI, can investment managers achieve competitive advantages in securities selection and asset allocation?

It depends on the investment time horizon. With short-term high-frequency trading (HFT), for instance, investment opportunities — the short-term noise rather than economic added value or mis-pricing due to structured behavioral tendencies — could be arbitraged away. On the contrary, long-term investments, such as environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors, engagement funds, and private equity funds will still require interactions with company management. Additionally, each potential investment that is not backed by big data that AI can sift through will require investors to conduct a more granular and hands-on analysis. In this sense, there could be opportunities in public markets over a mid-term investment horizon.*

2. If AI is the best tool to scour big data for sources of competitive advantage, will these advantages be limited in scale and sustainability? Or will they be larger and more enduring?

Mid-term investments in public markets are crowded with investment managers. The steep cost of big data acquisition and AI implementation may mean only larger managers and niche players will be able to capitalize on the opportunities these technologies present. If only a few large managers dominate the space, their advantage could endure over the long term. But the big data will have to be high quality if it is to yield long-lasting insights: No matter how sophisticated a firm’s AI techniques, they cannot extract actionable investment opportunities from big garbage. Moreover, looking back through history, many market crashes have resulted from overcrowding and glitches in mechanical investment approaches — Black Monday in 1987 and the quant liquidity crunch in August 2007, for example. Such outcomes may be inevitable, even for big data and AI.

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3. Are big data and AI incremental steps forward or quantum leaps?

Both asset managers and asset owners believe in big data and AI. But machines cannot persuade humans. Nor do they owe them a fiduciary duty. Moreover our investments have to be accounted for and intuitively understandable. Machines cannot communicate the economic and behavioral rationale of a particular investment strategy. That will take time, perhaps a generation or more. Thus, big data and AI are likely an incremental step forward rather than a quantum leap.

It is critical to avoid excessive expectations and rampant speculation and focus instead on how these tools can be applied appropriately. It is not the best-performing investment manager that survives or the most knowledgeable. It is the one who is most adaptable to change.

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* Investment professionals should keep the following points in mind:

1. Financial data distribution exhibit non-stationarity and fat-tails both in time series and cross-sectionally.

2. Some phenomena don’t repeat — certain events are one-offs. For example, the Swiss franc soared by more than 20% in value against the euro on 15 January 2015. Will this repeat in the foreseeable future? Probably not.

3. Unlike self-driving cars, for example, we cannot test various economic and political scenarios in the real world. Macro political and economic instabilities are also challenging. Neither the future nor the past is the weighted average of various estimations — there is only one path. Big data and AI might give us a probability-weighted result and every single scenario, but humans have cognitive and decision-making biases that make results subjective.


All posts are the opinion of the author. As such, they should not be construed as investment advice, nor do the opinions expressed necessarily reflect the views of CFA Institute or the author’s employer.

Image credit: ©Getty Images/ FrankRamspott


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About the Author(s)
Yoshimasa Satoh, CFA

Yoshimasa Satoh, CFA, is head of Business Operations at IG Securities Limited in Japan. He supports the head of Japan at IG Group and the representative director and CEO at IG Securities with the development and implementation of initiatives to improve business performances. He deputizes for the CEO, head of Japan as and when needed. Satoh sat on the board of CFA Society Japan from October 2018 to October 2022 and played a role as secretary officer during his tenure. He has overseen global multi-asset portfolio management, trading, and research and development of technology and data science solutions throughout his career. Previously, Satoh served as a portfolio manager of Quantitative Investment Strategies at Goldman Sachs Asset Management. He also worked for Bloomberg and Nasdaq, respectively, and assumed an Asia Pacific client coverage role. He started his career at Nomura Research Institute, where he led Nomura Securities’ equity trading and portfolio management technology teams. Satoh earned the CFA Institute Certificate in ESG Investing and holds a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in engineering from the University of Tsukuba.

1 thought on “Big Data and Artificial Intelligence in Investment Management: FAQs and Answers”

  1. Norbert says:

    2) „Such outcomes may be inevitable, even for big data and AI.“
    Absolutely. But how to prepare for that, requires deep understanding of current AI.

    3) „That will take time, perhaps a generation or more.“
    This is most probably estimated far too long. The technological singularity, postulated by most AI experts and relevant for such a bold prediction, will most probably take place in not much longer than 20 years. This would be far less than one generation and definitely not more.

    Thus, most of the conclusions in this article are correct for the current state of the art of AI only. Whoever wants to remain successful in investment business has to keep pace now with current developments of AI or prepare for closing shop sooner than s/he likes.

    Thus, …
    „It is the one who is most adaptable to change.“
    …is required from every professional more than ever, if s/he likes learning, understanding and applying AI with own trials and errors or not. Because all development, including organizational, societal and political, is currently speeding up and will be disrupted sooner or later due to AI.

    This has been self-reinforcing without limits for decades already, starting unnoticeable in the beginning and then exploding with unexpected disruptions for most all of a sudden. I guess that this is taking place right now and the non-linearity of such events or shift of paradigm should be pointed out more here.

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