Here’s who’s better at making money in financial markets.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has now closely matched or even surpassed humans in what were previously considered unattainable areas. These include chess, arcade games, Go, self-driving cars, protein folding and much more. This rapid technological progress has also had a huge impact on the financial services industry. More and more CEOs in the sector declare (explicitly or implicitly) that they run “technology companies with a banking license”.

There is also a rapid emergence and growth of the financial technology industry (fintech), where technology startups increasingly challenge established financial institutions in areas such as retail banking, pensions or personal investments. As such, AI often appears in behind-the-scenes processes such as cybersecurity, anti-money laundering, know-your-client checks or chatbots.

Among so many successful cases, one seems conspicuously absent: AI making money in financial markets. While simple algorithms are commonly used by traders, machine learning or AI algorithms are far less usual in investment decision-making. But as machine learning is based on analysing huge data sets and finding patterns in them, and financial markets generating enormous amounts of data, it would seem an obvious match. In a new study, published in the International Journal of Data Science and Analytics, we have shed some light on whether AI is any better than humans at making money.