Acadian Asset Management LLC is teaming up with Microsoft to adopt Bing Predicts as a means for investment advice. The news reported by Bloomberg states that the firm, headquartered in Boston, MA, is the first of its kind to use the automated machine learning technology to predict company earnings.
Put simply, Bing Predicts anonymously scours the internet, social media, and search engines in regards to everything from hobbies to purchases. After collecting a massive amount of data, it will forecast the probability of its designated assignment. Oftentimes, you’ll see it announcing its opinion on sports events among others.
Acadian’s decision to adopt Bing Predicts as an advisor is based on helping their clients know who/what is trending so that they can invest their money in upcoming or successful businesses for profit. Ryan Stever, director of quantitative global macro research at Acadian explained to Bloomberg:
“With Bing search history, we know what consumers are searching for, and how that will relate to the future earnings of companies. Anything that can speak to the future earnings growth of a company is going to be valuable to us.”
If the 2016 Presidential election has proven anything about Bing Predicts, it’s that even collected data from the internet still can read false. However, the technology has had its fair run of winning streaks, reportedly reaching up to 75% accuracy for championship winners while matching 80% accuracy with social media trends like American Idol.
Still, it will be interesting to see how accurate Bing Predicts can be for Acadian where more is at stake than being voted off the show.
