From Man vs. Machine to Man + Machine: The Art and AI of Stock Analyses

Sean Cao, Wei Jiang, Junbo L. Wang and Baozhong Yang

No 28800, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: An AI analyst we build to digest corporate financial information, qualitative disclosure and macroeconomic indicators is able to beat the majority of human analysts in stock price forecasts and generate excess returns compared to following human analyst. In the contest of “man vs machine,” the relative advantage of the AI Analyst is stronger when the firm is complex, and when information is high-dimensional, transparent and voluminous. Human analysts remain competitive when critical information requires institutional knowledge (such as the nature of intangible assets). The edge of the AI over human analysts declines over time when analysts gain access to alternative data and to in-house AI resources. Combining AI’s computational power and the human art of understanding soft information produces the highest potential in generating accurate forecasts. Our paper portraits a future of “machine plus human” (instead of human displacement) in high-skill professions.

JEL-codes: G11 G12 G14 G31 M41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big, nep-cmp and nep-fmk
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Published as Sean Cao & Wei Jiang & Junbo Wang & Baozhong Yang, 2024. "From Man vs. Machine to Man + Machine: The art and AI of stock analyses," Journal of Financial Economics, vol 160.

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