Gene Munster thinks that AI is about to transform the investment management industry.
He’s already seen how the technology has been used to successfully pick winning stocks.
Munster thinks a lot of jobs will be replaced by AI, but people with the right mix of soft skills will be in demand.
Should you be worried about AI coming for your job? If you work in the financial sector, Gene Munster thinks the answer is yes, but there are some ways to hedge the risk.
With many big companies citing AI as a reason for layoffs, it’s easy to wonder if your industry will be next. The speed of adoption of AI has been unprecedented for a new technology, and it is already reshaping entire industries in the three years since ChatGPT was introduced to the public.
A managing partner at tech-driven investment firm Deepwater Asset Management, Munster knows about how AI is progressing and what it can do. He thinks a fundamental shift is coming, ushering in an era in which soft skills will be highly prized by employers in the financial services industry.
Munter says he’s worried about his own job, and the AI could easily make investment managers like him obsolete.
But young people navigating the job market probably don’t need Munster to tell them how frightening the prospect of an AI-dominated workplace is.
The current landscape has been described as the “great freeze,” in which companies aren’t hiring or firing, leaving aspiring job seekers out in the cold.
There’s little question that the rise of AI is playing a part in the trend. According to Munster, this includes stock picking, as one of his firm’s affiliates discovered after introducing a machine to pick winning names.
“The machine is beating the humans, 75% of the cases, three-quarters of our portfolios, by an average of 6% and we’re still relatively early,” he told Business Insider.
His firm isn’t the only one to report success implementing AI into trading strategies. Managers of AI-driven quant funds have reported significant success by utilizing the technology to generate strong returns.
In Munster’s view, the use of AI could make people in his field obsolete within the next few years.
However, while he believes Wall Street jobs, particularly among analysts, may be reduced in the coming years, he said that demand for humans to manage client relationships will remain high. You’ll be particularly in demand if you’ve got the right mix of three non-technical skills, he said.
