本帖最後由 Doray 於 17-4-7 11:51 編輯
Robots Are Replacing Humans at All TheseWall Street Firms Lucinda Shen Mar 31, 2017
BlackRock isn't theonly Wall Street investor laying off human stock-pickers andreplacing them with robots. The world's biggest money manager on Tuesday announcedthat it would cut more than 40 jobs, replacing some of its human portfoliomanagers with artificially intelligent, computerized stock-trading algorithms.
Research, after all, has shown that active stock pickers generally underperform the wider stock market,leading customers to balk at the high fees those managers charge. Investorsare increasingly seeking cheaper options such asexchange-traded funds, some of which are managed by computers—a trend thathelped push BlackRock's assets undermanagement above $5 trillion for the first time recently.
The layoffs due to automation are an industry-wide shift.By 2025, financial institutions will reduce their human workforce by10%—resulting in roughly 230,000 fewer heads—as computers take their place, thefinancial services consultancy Opimas estimates in a recent report. Ofthose displaced jobs, 40% are expected to come from the money management space.
It's not just Wall Street, either: PwC warned last weekthat automation could replace 38% of allAmerican jobs by 2030.
BlackRock (BLK, +0.84%) and Wall Street'smotivation for the changes is clear: Replacing humans with artificialintelligence will lower their ratio of costs to profits by 28%, according toOpimas. Even celebrity stock-pickers who made their name makingthe right call at the right time are turning to AI for consistent returns. After cutting 15% of his workforce in mid-2016, veteranhedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones introduced computer-driven tools that wouldimitate trades by the firm's best managers, according to Bloomberg. Jones is alsoincorporating machine-learning technology in an effort to expand the firm'scomputerized trading capabilities.
Even the family office of legendary trader Steven Cohen,Point72 Asset Management has been trying to use computer algorithms to findwhat exactly made his most profitable trades work so well, in the hopes ofreplicating that success, according to Bloomberg.
Meanwhile, the founder of the world's largest hedge fund,Ray Dalio, has been investing in AI technology related to trading, as well astrying to automate most of his processes formanaging his firm Bridgewater. That could effectively keepDalio's unique management style in place at thefund, Bridgewater, even if the man himself has recently stepped back fromthe top role.
Yet while AI is becoming increasingly trendy for alltypes of hedge funds, Cohen and Dalio are later to adopt the technology thansome other tech-savvy investors. Quant firms including Two Sigma andRenaissance Technologies have been using artificial intelligence to automatesome of their trading operations for years, and are using computers to gleannew insights into the market.
Two Sigma is reportedly experimenting with deeplearning, a process that mimics the activity of neurons and was used to produce Amazon's"Alexa" robot, as well as Facebook's facial recognition system.And Renaissance Technologies, for one, is seeking to patent an algorithmic invention thatwould prevent high-frequency traders from front-running its market orders.
Besides stock trading, financial firms such as J.P. Morgan (JPM, +0.06%) areusing AI to make the job of complying with myriad financial regulations easier. IBM(IBM, -0.25%), for example, acquired WallStreet compliance firm Promontory Financial Group late last year in a push tobring the tech company's AI platform, Watson, to banks and hedge funds.
So while it might be too early to predict the end ofhuman stock-pickers, robots may quite literally give them a run for theirmoney.
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發表於 17-4-4 12:30
