AI Case Study

"Baillie Gifford launched a project exploring how to harness artificial intelligence to improve the performance of its funds, becoming one of the first traditional investment companies to push into an area traditionally dominated by hedge funds. Baillie Gifford has hired a former mathematician to assist with the project, and has four internal staff from its IT and investment teams focused on the initiative. The goal is to assess whether AI can eliminate mundane tasks that take up fund managers’ time, enabling them to investigate a wider range of potentially market-beating investment ideas.

The Edinburgh-based fund house, which tends to hold stocks for a minimum of five years, plans to assess whether AI has a discernible impact on fund performance before hiring more specialists in this area...by testing algorithms that can scan for stocks that might suit a particular investment style. The global equity team might want to search for companies that generate a certain level of sales revenue or gross profits, have significant insider ownership and meet several other criteria."