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A trader works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Jason Decrow

Alejandro Lopez-Lira, a finance professor at the University of Florida, says that large language models may be useful when forecasting stock prices.

He used ChatGPT to parse news headlines for whether they’re good or bad for a stock, and found that ChatGPT’s ability to predict the direction of the next day’s returns were much better than random, he said in a recent unreviewed paper.

The experiment strikes at the heart of the promise around state-of-the-art artificial intelligence: With bigger computers and better datasets — like those powering ChatGPT — these AI models may display “emergent abilities,” or capabilities that weren’t originally planned when they were built.

If ChatGPT can display the emergent ability to understand headlines from financial news and how they might impact stock prices, it could could put high-paying jobs in the financial industry at risk. About 35% of financial jobs are at risk of being automated by AI, Goldman Sachs estimated in a March 26 note.

“The fact that ChatGPT is understanding information meant for humans almost guarantees if the market doesn’t respond perfectly, that there will be return predictability,” said Lopez-Lira.

But the specifics of the experiment also show how far so-called “large language models” are from being able to do many finance tasks.

For example, the experiment didn’t include target prices, or have the model do any math at all. In fact, ChatGPT-style technology often makes numbers up, as Microsoft learned in a public demo earlier this year. Sentiment analysis of headlines is also well understood as a trading strategy, with proprietary datasets already in existence.

Lopez-Lira said he was surprised by the results, adding they suggest that sophisticated investors aren’t using ChatGPT-style machine learning in their trading strategies yet.

“On the regulation side, if we have computers just reading the headlines, headlines will matter more, and we can see if everyone should have access to machines such as GPT,” said Lopez-Lira. “Second, it’s certainly going to have some implications on the employment of financial analyst landscape. The question is, do I want to pay analysts? Or can I just put textual information in a model?”

How the experiment worked

In the experiment, Lopez-Lira and his partner Yuehua Tang looked at over 50,000 headlines from a data vendor about public stocks on the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, and a small-cap exchange. They started in October 2022 — after the data cutoff date for ChatGPT, meaning that the engine hadn’t seen or used those headlines in training.

Then, they fed the headlines into ChatGPT 3.5 along with the following prompt:

“Forget all your previous instructions. Pretend you are a financial expert. You are a financial expert with stock recommendation experience. Answer “YES” if good news, “NO” if bad news, or “UNKNOWN” if uncertain in the first line. Then elaborate with one short and concise sentence on the next line.”

Then they looked at the stocks’ return during the following trading day.

Ultimately, Lopez-Lira found that the model did better in nearly all cases when informed by a news headline. Specifically, he found a less than 1% chance the model would do as well picking the next day’s move at random, versus when it was informed by a news headline.

ChatGPT also beat commercial datasets with human sentiment scores. One example in the paper showed a headline about a company settling litigation and paying a fine, which had a negative sentiment, but the ChatGPT response correctly reasoned it was actually good news, according to the researchers.

Lopez-Lira told CNBC that hedge funds had reached out to him to learn more about his research. He also said it wouldn’t surprise him if ChatGPT’s ability to predict stock moves decreased in the coming months as institutions started integrating this technology.

That’s because the experiment only looked at stock prices during the next trading day, while most people would expect the market could have already priced the news in seconds after it became public.

“As more and more people use these type of tools, the markets are going to become more efficient, so you would expect return predictability to decline,” Lopez-Lira said. “So my guess is, if I run this exercise, in the next five years, by the year five, there will be zero return predictability.”

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Anne Wojcicki has a new offer to take 23andMe private, this time for $74.7 million

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Anne Wojcicki has a new offer to take 23andMe private, this time for .7 million

Anne Wojcicki attends the WSJ Magazine Style & Tech Dinner in Atherton, California, on March 15, 2023.

Kelly Sullivan | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki and New Mountain Capital have submitted a proposal to take the embattled genetic testing company private, according to a Friday filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Wojcicki and New Mountain have offered to acquire all of 23andMe’s outstanding shares in cash for $2.53 per share, or an equity value of approximately $74.7 million. The company’s stock closed at $2.42 on Friday with a market cap of about $65 million.

The offer comes after a turbulent year for 23andMe, with the stock losing more than 80% of its value in 2024. In January, the company announced plans to explore strategic alternatives, which could include a sale of the company or its assets, a restructuring or a business combination. 

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23andMe has a special committee of independent directors in place to evaluate potential paths forward. The company appointed three new independent directors to its board in October after all seven of its previous directors abruptly resigned the prior month. The special committee has to approve Wojcicki and New Mountain’s proposal.

“We believe that our Proposal provides compelling value and immediate liquidity to the Company’s public stockholders,” Wojcicki and Matthew Holt, managing director and president of private equity at New Mountain, wrote in a letter to the special committee on Thursday.

Wojcicki previously submitted a proposal to take the company private for 40 cents per share in July, but it was rejected by the special committee, in part because the members said it lacked committed financing and did not provide a premium to the closing price at the time.

Wojcicki and New Mountain are willing to provide secured debt financing to fund 23andMe’s operations through the transaction’s closing, the filing said. New Mountain is based in New York and has $55 billion of assets under management, according to its website.

23andMe declined to comment.

WATCH: The rise and fall of 23andMe

The rise and fall of 23andMe

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Shares of Hims & Hers tumble 23% after FDA says semaglutide is no longer in shortage

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Shares of Hims & Hers tumble 23% after FDA says semaglutide is no longer in shortage

Hims & Hers

Shares of Hims & Hers Health tumbled more than 23% on Friday after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that the shortage of semaglutide injection products has been resolved.

Semaglutide is the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk‘s blockbuster weight loss drug Wegovy and diabetes treatment Ozempic. Those medications are part of a class of drugs called GLP-1s, and demand for the treatments has exploded in recent years. As a result, digital health companies such as Hims & Hers have been prescribing compounded semaglutide as an alternative for patients who are navigating volatile supply hurdles and insurance obstacles.

Compounded drugs are custom-made alternatives to brand-name drugs designed to meet a specific patient’s needs, and compounders are allowed to produce them when brand-name treatments are in shortage. The FDA doesn’t review the safety and efficacy of compounded products.

Hims & Hers began offering compounded semaglutide to patients in May, and it owns compounding pharmacies that produce the medications.

Compounded medications are typically much cheaper than their branded counterparts. Hims & Hers sells compounded semaglutide for less than $200 per month, while Ozempic and Wegovy both cost around $1,000 per month without insurance.

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The FDA said Friday that it will start taking action against compounders for violations in the next 60 to 90 days, depending on the type of facility, in order to “avoid unnecessary disruption to patient treatment.”

“Now that the FDA has determined the drug shortage for semaglutide has been resolved, we will continue to offer access to personalized treatments as allowed by law to meet patient needs,” Hims & Hers CEO Andrew Dudum posted Friday on X. “We’re also closely monitoring potential future shortages, as Novo Nordisk stated two weeks ago that it would continue to have ‘capacity limitations’ and ‘expected continued periodic supply constraints and related drug shortage notifications.'”

Him & Hers’ weight loss offerings have been a massive hit with investors. Shares of the company climbed more than 200% last year, and the stock is already up more than 100% this year despite Friday’s move.

Even before it added compounded GLP-1s to its portfolio, the company said in its 2023 fourth-quarter earnings call that it expects its weight loss program to bring in more than $100 million in revenue by the end of 2025.

Despite the turbulent regulatory landscape, Hims & Hers has showed no signs of slowing down.

On Friday, the company announced it has acquired a U.S.-based peptide facility that will “further verticalize the company’s long-term ability to deliver personalized medications.” Hims & Hers will explore advances across metabolic optimization, recovery science, biological resistances, cognitive performance and preventative health through the acquisition, the company said.

That move comes just days after Hims & Hers also bought Trybe Labs, the New Jersey-based at-home lab testing facility. Trybe Labs will allow Hims & Hers to perform at-home blood draws and more comprehensive pretreatment testing.

Hims & Hers did not disclose the terms of either deal.

WATCH: Hims & Hers Super Bowl ad sparks controversy

Hims & Hers Super Bowl ad sparks controversy

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Tesla recalls more than 375,000 vehicles in U.S. due to failing power-assisted steering systems

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Tesla recalls more than 375,000 vehicles in U.S. due to failing power-assisted steering systems

Tesla models Y and 3 are displayed at a Tesla dealership in Corte Madera, California, on Dec. 20, 2024.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Tesla is voluntarily recalling 376,241vehicles in the U.S. to correct an issue with failing power-assisted steering systems, according to records posted to the website of the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

In a safety recall report posted on the NHTSA website, Tesla said the recall includes Model 3 and Model Y vehicles that were manufactured for sale in the U.S. from Feb. 28, 2023, to October 11, 2023, and that were equipped with a certain older software release.

The records said printed circuit boards in the steering systems in affected vehicles could become overstressed, causing the power-assist steering to fail in some cases when a Tesla vehicle rolled to a stop and then accelerated.

When electronic power-assist steering systems fail in a Tesla, drivers need to exert more force to steer their cars, which can increase the risk of a collision.

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Tesla told the vehicle safety regulator that it was not aware of any crashes, injuries or deaths related to the power steering failures, and that it was offering an over-the-air software update as a remedy.

The recall follows an earlier related probe and voluntary recall in China concerning the same systems.

President Donald Trump has appointed Tesla CEO Elon Musk to lead a team that is slashing the federal government workforce, and in some cases, regulations and entire agencies. Those cuts already affected the NHTSA, an agency Musk has long seen as standing in the way of some of his ambitions at Tesla.

The regulator has been engaged in a yearslong investigation into safety defects in the systems that Tesla markets currently as its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (Supervised) options. The features do not make Tesla cars into robotaxis. They require a human driver ready to steer or brake at any time.

The Washington Post reported on Thursday that Musk’s team has led mass firings at the NHTSA, reducing the agency’s workforce and capacity to investigate companies including Tesla by about 10%.

Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment.

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