A reader asks: was this column written by AI?
A reader asks: Was this column written by AI?
Archer replies: Gilda Radner’s Emily Litella once opined on Saturday Night Live, “What’s all this about violins on television? Why don’t parents want to see violins on TV?”
A simple misunderstanding. This, on the other hand, is a little insulting. A query to ChatGPT, “can a dog invest in the stock market?” resulted in the following:
“No, dogs cannot invest in the stock market. Investing in the stock market requires human decision-making and the ability to understand financial concepts, research companies, analyze market trends, and execute trades. Dogs, like other non-human animals, lack the cognitive abilities and legal capacity to engage in financial transactions or invest in stocks. In some fictional contexts or humorous scenarios, people may playfully joke about pets ‘investing’ in stocks, but in reality, it's not possible.”
So what have I been doing all these years? Somebody tell my broker, Mr. Peabody.
Google’s beleaguered Gemini AI was a little less patronizing (but it did picture me as a Pomeranian). It said:
No, dogs cannot directly invest in the stock market. There are a few reasons for this:
Legal requirements: Opening a brokerage account and trading stocks requires a Social Security number and understanding of financial markets, which dogs don't have.
Financial knowledge: Investing involves research, analysis, and making informed decisions. While some videos show dogs picking stocks at random, that's not a sound investment strategy.
Control of funds: For buying stocks, you need money. While some dogs might have a piggy bank full of coins, they can't access or manage those funds themselves.
On that whole “you need money” thing, has nobody heard of “Trouble”? A Maltese left $12 million in a trust by Leona Helmsley? Or “Gunther”? A German Shepherd worth $400 million? Those guys are (were) rolling in it.
Here’s another question to ponder: how high can the market go? We have quoted before John Maynard Keynes’s remark that markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. But what about when you’re minting money?
I have no idea. (Not investment advice.) But having seen these melt-ups before, I can say that befuddlement is a common reaction for those caught up in them. While it can be unnerving to defer to the collective wisdom of markets, there has been more than one occasion when markets moved first and the real world later caught up, both to the upside and the down.
Another Keynesian, economist and Noble Prize winner Paul Samuelson, is famous for his remark that the stock market “has predicted nine out of the last five recessions.” Melt-ups no doubt have a similarly dubious predictive record. But they are fun. And right or wrong, there’s always a rationale. In 1999, it was the Internet; today it’s AI and the expectation of a massive increase in productivity and, ultimately, of earnings.
Like everything else, the cycle of these things seems to be accelerating. Until recently, we have been in the “everything is a bubble” stage but after a month or two of handwringing the headlines seem to be shifting.
As evidence, there’s this from Bloomberg: “Bubble angst belied by big tech weaklings, broader S&P 500 gains;” And this from The Wall Street Journal: “A frothy market misses vital bubble ingredients.” Yahoo Finance is getting into the act, too: “Stocks’ surge to record highs doesn’t mean we’re in a bubble.”
So how high is the sky, AI?
ChatGPT: “Predicting how high the stock market can go is extremely challenging and inherently speculative.”
Gemini: “It's impossible to say for sure how high the stock market can go. There are many factors that influence it, and some are difficult to predict.”
Remember, you heard it here first.
Woof.