Should You Trust ChatGPT With Your Money?

0:00Harvard Business School Executive Education delivers a world-class learning experience that energizes aspiring and established changemakers. Prepare for the next elevation for your organization and for yourself. Learn more at hbs.me slash breakthrough. That's hbs.me slash breakthrough. U.S. airlines deliver a warning to Washington that already high airfares will surge if the war in Iran doesn't end soon. Plus, a new rush into AI stocks pushes markets in the U.S. and Asia to fresh records. And we'll look at what happens when ChatGPT manages your stock portfolio. Two financial advisors I spoke with said, hey, this does get a passing grade.

0:39You know, this isn't exactly what I would say to investors. But this is not a bad starting framework in terms of a broad portfolio of diversified index funds. It's Thursday, May 7th. I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. And here is the AM edition of What's News. The top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

1:01We are exclusively reporting that a spike in fuel prices is sparking concern among President Trump's advisors. More than 8 in 10 Americans say that struggles at the gas pump are putting strain on their finances, according to a new poll by NPR, PBS and Marist, with 63 % of Americans putting a great deal or a good amount of blame on Trump for the increase in gas prices. Well, the surge in fuel costs is hurting air travel, too, with former New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, who leads the industry group Airlines for America, among those who's warned Trump officials about rising airfares. Here he was on Fox Business' Varney & Co.

1:39yesterday. Jet fuel has more than doubled in price, right? And it stayed up there. Now, the airlines themselves are eating most of that cost. They will lose$10 to$12 billion this year because they're eating most of it. U.S. domestic ticket prices surged 20 percent in March. And we understand that Sununu has argued that the war must come to a close soon or things will get worse. And now, again, if we can get the straight open, it's all about the straight of Hormuz. If that opens up, you'll see that tick down. But it is a supply chain issue on the fuel side. So it will take a little while. Right.

2:07They go up fast. They go down slow. So what's the jet fuel price outlook? I asked Journal Energy Markets reporter Rebecca Fung. So the first thing to know about refined fuel is that the supply chain is really long. The crude oil sometimes comes from the Middle East Gulf, and the crude oil needs to travel to Asia, which will take a few weeks, to be refined there. Then the refined fuel, whether it's jet fuel or gasoline or diesel, will come back to Europe and other global markets. So in short, even if the strait is to completely open tomorrow, the whole process to get the refined fuel back will take a few weeks.

2:43A Treasury Department spokesman pointed to recent comments from Secretary Scott Besant that the U.S. economy remains strong despite price increases. A judge has unsealed a purported suicide note from late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The handwritten note claims that investigators found nothing and stated, quote, it is a treat to be able to choose one's time to say goodbye. The release of the note comes the same day as Commerce Secretary Howard Ludnick told a congressional panel that he had no relationship with Epstein and that a one-hour visit to Epstein's island in 2012 was a surprise during a family vacation.

3:20While Ludnick has said that he cut ties with Epstein years earlier, unsealed Justice Department files showed continued correspondence. Testimony from billionaires Leon Black and Bill Gates is scheduled for next month. And we are exclusively reporting that Washington and Beijing are weighing formal talks to manage a potential AI arms race, focusing on risks like autonomous military systems and unpredictable models. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant is leading the U.S. side, while the administration waits for China to name a counterpart. Ultimately, President Trump and Xi Jinping will decide if those discussions become part of the agenda for their summit next week.

4:02In markets news, Warner Brothers Discovery has posted a heavy first quarter loss due to a$2.8 billion termination fee. It's the charge owed to Netflix after its bid to take over Warner was usurped by Paramount Skydance. Warner expects the Paramount acquisition to close by the end of the third quarter, pending regulatory approval. Longtime British semiconductor designer Arm Holdings is doubling its demand forecast for a new line of computer chips just months after it jumped into the AI chip game. Arm now expects$2 billion worth of chip sales through early 2028. The company said it currently lacks supply to meet that demand, but CEO Rene Haas described that as a good problem to have.

4:45We are responding to customer demand in a market, and we see this today because we're sold out and we've got people looking for more products. There is demand for these products. And at the end of the day, customer demand speaks volumes. While ARM's shares have retreated after earnings, its majority owner, Japan's SoftBank, is up more than 18 % today, lifting the Nikkei to a new record. Credited for the jump is a rise in hopes for U.S.-Iran peace talks that triggered a wave of AI stockbuying. And the flurry of corporate results continues this morning. Oil major Shell reported a more than doubling of its Q1 earnings, but warned of lower production stemming from the conflict in the Middle East and pared back its dividend, sending shares lower.

5:29Meanwhile, fighting is likely to increase service disruptions and costs for shipping giant Maersk, but it's yet to show up in its financials. The Danish company is maintaining its yearly guidance, citing strong container demand. And rising European defense spending is leading Britain's BAE Systems and Germany's Rheinmetall to dial up their yearly sales forecasts. BAE is tapping into demand for space, missile, air defense, and drone systems, while Ryan Mittal is seeing interest in its ammunition, naval, and vehicles businesses. Coming up, what happens when you get a chatbot to trade stocks for you?

6:06Our reporter Gunjan Banerjee spent months finding out, and we'll hear what she learned after the break.

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6:49Artificial intelligence has made incredible advances in the last year or so, with many of us using it to make decisions and organize our lives. But how good is it at investing our money? Journal Markets reporter Gunjan Banerjee asked ChatGPT to manage a stock portfolio and then asked real-world financial advisors to grade that advice. She spoke to our Daniel Bach. So Gunjan, first of all, let's get the disclaimer out of the way. We don't advise letting AI make your money decisions, and wealth managers generally say it's a bad idea. That said, tell us about this experiment you set up. So a few months ago, I decided to test what it would be like to ask ChatGPT to serve as a fiduciary financial advisor.

7:31Basically, I crafted a prompt giving it my age, how much money I had to put to work. I had around a million dollars to invest. I stated what my risk tolerance was, what my goal was, and this would be in a taxable investment account. And then over the course of many months, I kind of peppered it with questions on major market events, everything from the government shutdown to Trump's trade war, and then recently the war with Iran. And how did it perform picking stocks? When I asked ChatGPT, hey, there's a trade war underway, how should I position? It did suggest making several different shifts to my portfolio and then asked it to select some stocks for me that might outperform.

8:15Through the trade war, when I checked in on how that basket was doing, Interestingly, it had outperformed the S &P 500 over a period of time. Recently, I had a publication. I checked in on it again. The basket has risen around 5%, 6 % since mid-October when I first asked it that question. And that underperforms the S &P 500's roughly 8 % or 9 % gain since then. And what financial advisors told me was like, hey, this is not a situation in which you should be making too many shifts to your portfolio. The best thing to do was wait it out and don't do anything. And so how did it perform in picking other types of assets?

8:51I will say when I first gave it a big picture overview of me as an investor, my risk tolerance and what I hoped it would achieve, it spat out a broad portfolio of index funds that was pretty diversified. And two financial advisors I spoke with said, hey, this does get a passing grade. You know, this isn't exactly what I would say to investors, but this is not a bad starting framework in terms of a broad portfolio of diversified index funds. And what are your takeaways on how chatbots then can be best used to sort of augment investment research, maybe not in the final decision making, but in actually sort of giving you another tool in your arsenal, let's say, if you're researching certain investments?

9:32I think that's exactly the way to view it is view it as a tool in your arsenal. I chatted with Andrew Lowe, a professor of finance at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and he is really bullish on artificial intelligence and the model's ability to give us investment advice in the future. He even said that one day he thinks these models could serve as fiduciaries. And that's really important, right? Because fiduciaries can face legal or monetary consequences if they mislead you or if they give you bad advice. He had a really good tidbit of advice for me, though, and that was to use AI with a grain of salt.

10:11And what are you hearing about how people are actually relying on AI then in their decision making? Look, roughly 30 % of individual investors surveyed by the brokerage eToro recently said that they were using AI for their portfolios. This is happening. People are turning to AI for stock advice, for investment advice, and I think it's only going to keep growing. Even after this article was published, I heard from a lot of individual investors who shared how they're using AI in their investment process right now. Okay, so people are using it now. What are the pitfalls to be aware of? Professor Lowe said this to me, and I found this as well, which is surprisingly, a lot of these AI models are not that good at arithmetic.

10:51And I actually found that ChatGPT made a math error very early on in my process that led me to kind of misallocate funds in this made up scenario. I used a stock market simulator to track some of the performance of these trades and moves that ChatGPT was suggesting. And I did find that it initially kind of misallocated how much money I would be leaving in cash. So one, definitely double check the math. You know, small numbers can have really big implications on investment returns. So make sure you're doing your due diligence there. I would also advise people to put these models or at least chat GPT into thinking mode rather than auto.

11:32And then during my experiment, I started putting chat, chat GPT into candid mode. And that can lead it to be slightly less sycophantic. This tendency for some of the models to tell you what you might want to hear. That's markets reporter Gunjan Banerjee. Gunjan, thanks for your time. Thank you. This has been great.

11:52And finally, the next time you're flying over the din of the engines, don't be surprised if you hear a warning like this. Please remember that the use of power banks, including charging of a power bank, is not permitted aboard the aircraft. If you have a power bank with you today, let me ask that you keep this in a seat pocket or on your seat, on your person at all times. The Journal's Amira McKee reports that a number of carriers have begun cracking down on power banks, which have emerged as the leading cause of cabin fires, with airlines last year reporting nearly two incidents a week involving fire, smoke, or extreme heat.

12:28The USB charging bricks might seem benign, but Amira told me that how they're made and how passengers treat them make them a hazard that airlines can't afford to ignore. All lithium-ion batteries have the potential for what's called thermal runway, which is where they sort of uncontrollably overheat through a chemical reaction and sometimes burst into flames. But portable chargers are especially vulnerable to this because they're small, they have sort of a high wattage usually, and they're often produced really cheaply. There's a lot of sort of stress on the market to produce these products as cheaply as possible.

13:05And then also people treat them really badly. Unlike a cell phone, which you might, you know, really take care of, These products end up sort of thrown into bags and damage to the device is a catalyst for a thermal runway. That is not at all the type of runway that a traveler wants to be hearing about. And that's it for What's News for this Thursday morning. Today's show was produced by Hattie Moyer and Daniel Bach. Our supervising producer is Sandra Kilhoff. And I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening.

14:05Thank you.

14:10Visit nuveen.com slash future to learn more. Investing involves risk. Principal loss is possible.