Just Short The Robots

Just two weeks ago, we detailed the launch of a new A.I.-driven equity ETF whose human ‘manager’ claimed:

“EquBot AI Technology with Watson has the ability to mimic an army of equity research analysts working around the clock, 365 days a year, while removing human error and bias from the process.”

According to Chida Khatua, CEO and co-founder of EquBot LLC:

“Machine learning is one of the most powerful applications of artificial intelligence. As powerful as many algorithms underlying expensive quantitative hedge funds and other vehicles might be, unless they’re also built with AI and machine learning baked right in, mistakes can be propagated and opportunities for outperformance can be missed.”

Neither of the founders is lacking in confidence when discussing the potential for the new ETF. From Business Wire:

“With the launch of AIEQ, we’re not only bringing our new fund to market,’ said Art Amador, co-founder and COO of EquBot.  

‘We believe we’re pioneering a whole new investment category; one that will soon have investors and advisors diversifying their portfolios among passive, active and AI approaches”

So, we know you are wondering…

How great has the performance been of this army-of-research-analyst-beating ETF since its launch?

Let’s see…

So- a 300bps underperformance in 12 days.

Perhaps we are just not smart enough, but for those claiming investors should “just own the damn robots,” maybe it’s time to think again…or do the machines know something we don’t know about where the market ‘should’ be trading.

“I know everything hasn’t been quite right with me, but I can assure you now, very confidently, that it’s going to be alright again. I feel much better now.”