Aberdeen Standard Investments has launched a global fund where the stocks will be picked using artificial intelligence.
The Aberdeen Global Artificial Intelligence Global Equity SICAV is the product of a collaboration between Aberdeen Standard Investments's quantitative investment strategies team and the Mitsubishi UFJ Trust Investment Technology Institute (MTEC) in Japan.
The fund will have machine learning as part of the investment process, helping to select the equities. The investments will be based on risk factors such as value, quality, momentum, small size and low volatility.
Martin Gilbert, co-chief executive at Aberdeen Standard Investments, said: "For active investment management firms, the ability to use machines to read and understand vast amounts of data in order to forecast market moves more accurately has spawned innovation and a resurgence in active quantitative investment approaches.
"To benefit from this AI-driven innovation, and to complement our highly successful active fundamental strategies, we are proud to have collaborated with the MTEC – Japan’s leading and most prestigious financial technology think-tank – and the Trust Bank to develop this active quant fund."
The fund has an annual charge of 0.5 per cent for institutional investors and 1 per cent for retail investors.
Its underlying technology will determine the weightings to each factor within the fund and allow Aberdeen Standard to time the relevant metrics used within those factors.
Aberdeen Standard said this would allow it to bias the portfolio towards the factors best suited to the market environment at a particular moment in time.
Alistair Cunningham, financial planning director at Wingate Financial Planning in Surrey said: "It seems to be quite gimmicky, how does it differ to other algorithm-managed funds we have seen historically?"
david.thorpe@ft.com
