Role of Artificial Intelligence in Trading

17th May 2024

We are in 2024 and it is the era of Artificial Intelligence. Today, AI has entered almost all sectors and finance is not an exception to it. While humans remain a significant portion of the world of trading, AI has also set its roots because of its ability to ease the work with its efficient and accurate financial decision-making qualities. Because of its popularity spike in financial markets, investors and traders of all levels are utilizing AI to enhance their trading strategies. According to research, the global AI trading market was valued at $18.2 billion in 2023 and is assumed to triple in size by the end of 2033. Fascinating, Isn’t it?

In this comprehensive guide, we will understand the role of artificial intelligence in trading and how it is contributing to investors’ investment strategies from analysis to execution.

 

What is AI trading?

AI trading, also called Algorithmic trading, simply refers to the use of artificial intelligence’s unmatchable capabilities and machine learning techniques to trade by analyzing larger market data, getting investment ideas, and building portfolios. Additionally, it involves the automatic buying and selling of stocks in stocks trading based on the insights collected, thus, helping investors and traders make more informed decisions and gain potential profit with lesser risk of human error or shortsightedness. 

Human Stock Trading Vs AI Stock Trading

Here is a comparison of human stock trading with AI stock trading:

  • The human stock trades can be impacted by factors like psychological barriers, pre-established guidelines, etc. However, using AI for stock trading allows investors to trade in multiple markets simultaneously through automation without hindering discipline through trade. 
  • Irrational human sentiments can result in confused judgments because of negative psychological biases or unmanaged emotions, thus, resulting in poor investment decisions. In contrast, automated AI stock trading eliminates the effects of irrational human emotions.
  • In stock trading, a human can easily deviate from their trading principles. However, AI can never mutate such behaviors as it works on different metrics and processes data objectively as defined by investors and traders.
  • AI can execute every market move which is impossible for humans to do manually from trading platforms.

How does AI Trading work?

Artificial intelligence stock trading is an innovative process involving the use of computers trained to identify market trends and patterns along with spotting potentially profitable trades. It involves:

  1. Collecting Data: It involves collecting finance-related data from different sources ranging from historical price trends to social media sentiments, news articles, etc using AI to trade stocks.
  2. Data Processing: The whole of the data collected is not useful, thus, it requires cleaning that involves getting rid of errors and organizing it after filling in the missing values accurately.
  3. Feature Extraction: This involves transforming raw data into a set of features, such as P/E ratios, moving average, and volume, or characteristics that can be used for analyzing their influence on stock prices.
  4. Model trading: This collected data is used to train machine learning algorithms for identifying different relationships and patterns between stock price movements and extracted features for carefully predicting the future tendencies of the stock market.
  5. Decision Making and Execution: Insights on holding, selling, and buying stocks are provided to AI models for analyzing historical and real-time data. Investors can use a brokerage platform or choose to automate the AI recommendations for executing the trade.

Use of AI in Trading

The role of AI in trading includes all aspects of trading, i.e., data analysis and prediction, algorithmic trading, risk management, and portfolio analysis management:

  1. Data Analysis and Predictions: AI in forex trading has the potential to evaluate a bulk volume of financial data like news sentiments, economic indicators, market trends, etc to identify the correlation within the data and its patterns. By analyzing different conditions, the AI models can easily make predictions about price movements in the future with a higher degree of accuracy.
  2. Algorithmic Trading: using the AI algorithm, the traders can run automated trades based on pre-determined criteria, like volume patterns, price movements, technical indicators, etc, which will be faster and more efficient than usual human trading capabilities. It can also reduce execution errors and increase the chances of gaining possible market opportunities.
  3. Portfolio Management: Using Machine Learning algorithms, AI-powered portfolio management platforms offer traders the ability to construct and rebalance their investment portfolios by considering factors like asset allocation, investment goals, and risk tolerance. 
  4. Risk Management: Trading is a riskier affair, and most investors fail in the trading world because of their lack of ability to manage the risks properly. Using AI in trading can help them by assessing different risk factors associated with individual trading strategies, portfolios, or stocks.

Conclusion

To conclude, modern technologies like AI in trading can be beneficial for traders looking for ways to improve their training skills and get substantial gains with minimum effort. However, AI in trading also has risks that can not be ignored in light of its advantages. Investors must remember that AI is just a tool that can complement humans but cannot replace them. So, solely relying on this technology can lead to significant losses.