How AI is speeding up the slow investing game
Andrew Chin, the firm's chief artificial intelligence officer, said the analyst used one of the $790 billion asset manager's in-house tools to quickly interpret the legislation and identify which companies would be affected, allowing her to make a fast, confident investment call.
"Because she was able to do that, she was able to make money for our client portfolios a lot faster," said Chin, adding that the analyst "locked in some of the alpha" in a way that was not previously possible.
Fundamental investors take a slow and methodical approach to their investment decisions. Whether reviewing financial statements or talking to vendors and company executives, it can take months for a fundamental investor to reach a conclusion about what to invest in and at what price.
Not anymore. Artificial intelligence is changing the slow investing game popularized by investors like Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway and Peter Lynch of Fidelity.
While asset managers have long used machine learning to crunch spreadsheets and detect trading signals—especially in quant and systematic strategies— these tools can also quickly digest and analyze vast reams of unstructured information, like earnings call transcripts, regulatory filings, and even emails. It's allowing large asset managers to make fundamental investing decisions faster than ever before.
Here are three firms that are using AI to transform their investment processes:
JPMorgan Asset Management
Two and a half years ago, JPMorgan Asset Management AI strategist Dillon Edwards sat down with upward of 50 portfolio managers to understand what they needed. He asked them about the screens they use, the questions they ask themselves throughout the day, and the common thread was, "Just get our attention to the right data, at the right time, in the right place."
That request led to the creation of Smart Monitor, which Edwards described as "Spotify for the investor." It scans mountains of data to surface timely, relevant insights for the firm's portfolio managers and analysts.
Smart Monitor is part of JPMorgan's broader AI build-out for its $3.7 trillion asset management arm, which is hosted on a platform called Spectrum. Another tool within this platform is Moneyball, which helps portfolio managers identify and correct potential biases in their investment decisions by analyzing historical data and market behaviors.
Rather than building something new for investors to learn, Edwards and his team focused on AI directly into the process that investors have spent years perfecting.
The bottom-up approach has helped to minimize AI skeptics: A handful of "champion" PMs worked closely with engineers during development and became in-house unofficial salespeople who market it to their own teams.
"No one wants another tool, another thing to do, something that the AI team somehow thinks is going to be helpful for an investor without empathizing with what they're doing today," he said.
Kristian West, JPMorgan Asset Management's head of investment platform, said the firm is also developing similar tools with the goal of seeing if they can continue to scale the quantitative process, or data-driven systematic investing.
"That's an area where we think it is just pretty obvious, whereas technology and data capabilities improve, those two worlds collide a lot more," he said.
Alliance Bernstein
For fundamental investors—portfolio managers and analysts who base long-term decisions on a deep understanding of individual companies—this marks a turning point: a chance to move faster and dig deeper, but also a moment to rethink how they work.
Chin calls this evolution the rise of the "iron person": a human investor enhanced by AI armor. Not a replacement, but an upgrade.
AB has developed an internal chatbot called AB AI, along with several tools to help pull from internal data, prep for company meetings, or conduct research tailored to the manager's investment philosophy.
Chin said that many AB analysts often develop their own AI agents using ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot with specific prompts to, for example, run an analysis on the companies in their sector after an earnings call.
"They're able to then analyze companies the way they want to, so they get a more tailored or customized version of what the tool can provide them," he said.
Chin said about 75% of the firm's over 500 investment professionals are using their tools.
People sharing stories like "it takes me a day rather than a month to do something, or I was able to get this insight that I did not get before," have driven others to try it, said Chin.
For the remaining 25% who haven't picked up AI, he believes they "will just naturally come when they see the performance of their counterparts has gotten better."
BlackRock
A big reveal from BlackRock's investor day last month shows just how fast the field is moving. The $11 trillion investing behemoth has launched Asimov, an agentic AI platform for its fundamental equity business. Agentic AI doesn't just answer questions following prompts — it can take action on its own.
"While everyone else is sleeping at night, we have these virtual AI agents, they're scanning research notes, company filings, emails to generate portfolio insights," the firm's chief operating officer, Robert Goldstein, said.
He hopes Asimov will be deployed across the firm by the next investor day, offering investors at the world's biggest asset manager a powerful teammate.
Raffaele Savi, its global head of systemic investing, underscored how significantly AI is affecting the investing world.
The speed and power of having "real-time, millions of stimulations a day happening in the background, developing situational awareness" that helps ensure the portfolio reflects the manager's intentions are "profound."
"The world has changed tremendously," he said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Time Magazine
30 minutes ago
- Time Magazine
Trump's ‘Big Beautiful Bill' Cements GOP Dominance
The passage of the 'Big Beautiful Bill' on Thursday was a moment when President Donald Trump's hold on the Republican Party was tested — and he won. GOP holdouts objected to the trillions of dollars the bill is projected to add to the debt and the cuts to Medicaid and other safety net programs. But in the end, Trump was able to browbeat Republicans into supporting his costly plans to fund long-term tax cuts for the wealthy, more deportations of immigrants and boosting defense spending. Trump's victory further strengthens his power in Washington and clears the way for him to take even more aggressive actions on immigration, trade policy and depart from American tradition to hammer the chair of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell into lowering interest rates, a move that could give the U.S. economy a sugar high of cheap cash. Trump's control over the GOP 'is as close to total as any President has ever had over his own political party,' says Whit Ayres, a long-time Republican pollster. 'It gives him the support of his own legislative caucus for almost anything he wants to do.' Trump plans to sign the bill into law on Friday at 5 p.m. as B-2 bombers jet over the White House during a Fourth of July celebration for military families. 'We'll be signing with those beautiful planes flying right over our heads,' Trump told reporters traveling with him on Air Force One on Thursday evening. In order to get the bill passed, some Republicans broke their promises not to cut Medicaid, other Republicans reneged on pledges to keep down the national debt. In the House, only two Republicans—Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania—ended up voting against Trump's bill. The bill narrowly passed the House 218-214 with all Democrats voting against it. Massie wrote on X that he voted 'no' because 'it will significantly increase U.S. budget deficits in the near term, negatively impacting all Americans through sustained inflation and high interest rates.' The bill barely made it out of the Senate earlier in the week. Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina voted against Trump's bill forcing Vice President J.D. Vance to cast a tie-breaking vote. Tillis said the Medicaid cuts would be devastating to his state, and, after bucking Trump, said he wouldn't run for reelection. Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri had argued against the cuts to Medicaid but ended up voting 'yes,' and Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, a Republican, had criticized the bill for not cutting enough to offset adding trillions to the debt, but ended up voting for the bill. Now Trump is faced with the daunting task of selling the unpopular bill to the public. Only 29% of voters said they support the bill, according to a Quinnipiac University poll published on June 26, while 55% percent of voters said that they oppose the bill and 16% were unsure. The cuts to social safety net programs and the increase in the deficit could lead to political blowback that helps Democrats take back control of the House in the 2026 mid-term elections. The bill could be a political risk for Trump, says Ayres, if 'a whole lot of Trump supporters lose their health care and get angry about it.'
Buzz Feed
36 minutes ago
- Buzz Feed
House Passes Trump's Bill Cutting Taxes And Medicaid
WASHINGTON ― Republicans pushed their giant bill cutting taxes and Medicaid through the House on Thursday, sending the legislation to President Donald Trump to sign into law. Millions of Americans will lose health insurance as a result of the bill, while tax cuts favoring the wealthy will further swell the national debt. The bill will also supercharge Trump's efforts to round up, detain, and deport millions of immigrants lacking legal authorization to remain in the country. The bill passed by a vote of 218-214, with all Democrats and two Republicans, Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), opposed. 'Republicans in Congress have succeeded in our mission to enact President Trump's America First agenda,' House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said in a statement after the bill passed. 'And importantly, we did it in record time, so that the effects of this nation-shaping legislation can be felt by the American people as soon as possible.' With its advantageous tax treatment for rich households, its fiscal irresponsibility, and a remarkably slapdash legislative process, the so-called Big Beautiful Bill bears the hallmarks of Republican governance in the Trump era. And, of course, several Republicans said they'd vote no but caved amid threats from Trump. The big bill rolls back expansions of the federal safety net recently enacted by Democratic presidents and entrenches the temporary tax cuts Trump signed into law during his first term. The $4.5 trillion cost of the tax cuts is only partially offset by more than $1 trillion in cuts to federal food and health programs, with reductions in Medicaid spending potentially imperiling hospitals around the country, especially in rural areas. 'This is about taking from the most vulnerable to pay off the already powerful,' Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said on the House floor before the vote on Wednesday. 'It is about pleasing one man who is holding this Congress hostage with primary threats and social media tantrums. This bill is cruel, it is cowardly, it is a betrayal of everything this country is supposed to stand for.' After warning for years that widening federal budget deficits and the growing national debt could destroy America, Republicans have just given their blessing to an extra $3.4 trillion in debt, at least. Citing fantastical economic growth forecasts, they've said the budget experts are all wrong and the tax cuts will pay for themselves. They claimed that failing to extend Trump's 2017 tax cuts before they expire at the end of the year posed a major threat to the economy. 'If we do nothing, the Trump tax cuts, the most pro-growth tax reforms in generations, will expire. That means higher taxes on nearly every American,' Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-N.Y.) said Wednesday. Though the tax cuts wouldn't expire for another six months, Republicans gave themselves an arbitrary July 4 deadline for finishing the bill, and the House stayed in session all night to get the bill done. It wasn't pretty. For about six hours, five Republicans ground all business to a halt by voting against a procedural step to begin debate on the bill. Another eight Republicans refused to cast votes at all. They were protesting changes made to the bill by the Senate, which added about a trillion dollars to the original House bill's cost. All but one of them, Fitzpatrick, relented just before 3:30 a.m., having won no changes to the bill. 'Don't ever lecture us about fiscal responsibility,' House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) said in a record-setting, nearly nine-hour floor speech before the final vote. Jeffries said the bill amounted to an assault on health care and would 'effectively end Medicaid as we know it.' Several moderate Republicans said they had qualms about the bill's Medicaid cuts, but Fitzpatrick was the only one who followed through. For one, Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.), who said Saturday, 'I will vote no,' voted yes. Johnson and other top Republicans insisted the bill does not cut Medicaid, that it merely reduces 'waste, fraud and abuse,' in patently untrue statements. The biggest Medicaid cut comes in the form of new 'work requirements' targeting nondisabled adults, who will have to prove to state Medicaid administrators they're either working, volunteering, or in training at least 20 hours per week. Despite the idea that the requirement would prod people into jobs, the Congressional Budget Office said it's unlikely they'll land the kind of employment that comes with health insurance. 'Few of those disenrolled from Medicaid because of the policy would have access to and enroll in employment-based coverage,' the CBO told lawmakers earlier this month. The bill would roll back future spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, including by requiring states that make high rates of erroneous SNAP payments to share a portion of the cost of the food benefits, creating a strong incentive for states to trim SNAP enrollment. But as Senate Republicans rushed to lock down votes, they changed the provision to exempt states with high error rates, such as Alaska, to win over Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). The resulting provision creates a perverse incentive for states to make even more improper SNAP payments. The Medicaid changes will mostly take effect starting in fiscal year 2027, but immigration authorities will immediately get $150 billion for Trump's mass deportation agenda, including $45 billion for new detention centers and $29 billion for new Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. The money for detention centers alone is more than five times the annual budget of the US Bureau of Prisons. The cash infusion comes as Trump openly muses about deporting native-born US citizens. 'We are talking about ICE being turned into a full-scale paramilitary force,' Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) told HuffPost. 'This is absolutely something that we should be taking as a profound threat to our society and to American citizens.' In a remarkable social media post on Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance stated that the vast majority of the 900-page bill's various policy changes, which affect vast resources and the nation's fiscal future, are meaningless in comparison to mass deportation. Vance wrote, 'Everything else ― the CBO score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy ― is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions.'
Yahoo
38 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Teamsters' Top Dog Calls on Legislators to Oppose State AI Law Moratorium
Sean O'Brien, general president for the International Brotherhood of the Teamsters, isn't so sure that all the provisions outlined in President Donald Trump's 'one, big, beautiful bill' are quite so beautiful. The Teamsters boss wrote to senators asking that they strike a moratorium on state artificial intelligence laws from the bill, which is currently under the Senate's consideration. More from Sourcing Journal Daydream Unveils Fashion Search Engine Built to Elevate Discovery LA Startup Grabs $10M to Build Out Fully Automated Freight Cross-Dock 4 in 10 US Parents Plan to Decrease Their Spend on Clothes and Shoes for Back to School O'Brien called the proposal 'a disaster for communities and working people' and 'an attempt to give special Congressionally-sanctioned treatment to a select few to the detriment of the American workers and the public.' The provision O'Brien refers to in his letter, if passed, would place a 10-year moratorium on state and local AI legislation; that is to say, non-federal governments in the U.S. would be barred from enacting and enforcing laws related to AI, its risks or its further development. Most U.S. states have, at the very least, seen some form of AI-related regulation proposed in their legislatures, but some, including New York, California, Colorado, Texas and others, have already enacted legislation related to the burgeoning technology. To date, federal legislators have not approved sweeping AI-focused legislation, which marks a break from other global leaders' policies. The European Union has enacted the EU AI Act, which regulates systems by risk. That in mind, if such a moratorium went into place, there would be a general lack of governance around AI systems in the United States. O'Brien addressed that hole in his letter. 'To date, Congress has not passed substantial legislation to govern the implementation of artificial intelligence,' he wrote. 'In response, unions, community organizations, faith-based groups and others across the nation are working with state legislatures and localities in a bipartisan manner to address the dangers of unfettered AI deployment without oversight.' The Teamsters have been vocal about their commitment to keeping a human in the loop with emerging technologies in the workforce. The union has already been active in supporting laws that center human labor, including a California bill that would prohibit autonomous vehicles (AVs) from delivering commercial goods without a human operator. This week, the Teamsters hosted a rally outside a hearing for the Massachusetts General Court Join Committee on Transportation, specifically demanding that lawmakers pass a bill that would require humans in AVs and requesting that they axe a Waymo-backed bill related to autonomous driving. If state legislation goes by the wayside because of the moratorium in Republicans' 'big, beautiful bill,' it could kill momentum behind pro-worker legislation unfolding in many states. According to a social media post accompanying the full text of O'Brien's letter, Teamsters harbor specific concerns about driverless trucks, AI-based surveillance and automation that revokes existing jobs. O'Brien said that, if Republicans choose to throw their heft behind the bill without adaptations to the AI moratorium provision, it would show that their allegiance to Big Tech supersedes their commitment to the average American worker. 'If adopted, this provision extinguishes local control in favor of giving tech companies free reign to act without regard to the cost and impact on local communities,' O'Brien wrote. 'Pure and simple, it is a give-away to Big Tech companies who reap economic value by continuing to operate in an unregulated void where their decisions and behavior are accountable to no one.' The Teamsters aren't the only union occupied with emerging technologies' impact on the future of work. The International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) found itself in a back-and-forth battle with the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) over automation in its last contract negotiation. The ILA ceased talks with the USMX over concerns over technologies like rail-mounted gantry cranes, but the two entities ultimately rectified their disparities, agreeing upon a six-year contract that saw ILA boss Harold Daggett touting the contract as one that boasts 'full protections against automation' for workers. That automation was a strong sticking point in the negotiations is likely representative of the fact that, nationally, unions are paying strong attention to the possibility for emerging technologies, including AI, to disrupt their standard work patterns. Proponents of the moratorium have argued that the moratorium would ensure AI innovation is not stifled as the U.S. works to compete against other countries, like China, over development of the technology. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said that 'having a patchwork of 50 different standards' would detract from the proliferation of AI in the U.S. But not all Republicans are on board; some senators have actively spoken about their resistance to the moratorium. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said he would propose an amendment to strike the moratorium from the current version of the bill if needed. That kind of action is exactly what O'Brien and the Teamsters seem to be hoping for. In his letter, the head Teamster urged legislators to act against the moratorium. 'On behalf of 1.3 million Teamsters, I strongly urge you to oppose this provision of the reconciliation bill. If the language is included in legislation on the [Senate] floor, I ask you to support an amendment to remove it,' he wrote to Senators.
