SAN FRANCISCO & SUMMIT, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--EquBot LLC, in partnership with ETF Managers Group (ETFMG), today debuted the world’s first Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) powered by articificial intelligence: the AI Powered Equity ETF (NYSE Arca: AIEQ).
AIEQ is an active ETF built on EquBot’s proprietary algorithms and is the world’s first artifical intelligence (AI) ETF, utilizing the cognitive and big data processing abilities of IBM Watson™ to analyze U.S.-listed investment opportunities.
EquBot’s approach ranks investment opportunities based on their probability of benefiting from current economic conditions, trends, and world- and company-specific events, and identifies those equities with the greatest potential for appreciation. EquBot and ETFMG expect the fund’s portfolio to typically consist of 30 to 70 of U.S. equities only and volatility comparable to the broader U.S. equity market.
With artificial intelligence, computer systems are able to perform tasks that would normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages. In the case of AIEQ, the fund’s underlying technology is constantly analyzing information for approximately 6,000 U.S.-listed equities, including company management and market sentiment, and processes more than one million regulatory filings, quarterly results releases, news articles, and social media posts every day.
“ETFs have made beta ‘smart,’ but with AIEQ we’re looking to make investing intelligent,” said Chida Khatua, CEO and co-founder of EquBot LLC. “EquBot AI Technology with Watson has the ability to mimic an army of equity research analysts working around the clock, 365 days a year, while removing human error and bias from the process.”
Khatua notes that the approach underpinning AIEQ also includes machine learning, giving it the ability to automatically learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed.
“Machine learning is one of the most powerful applications of artificial intelligence,” he added. “As powerful as many algorithms underlying expensive quantitative hedge funds and other vehicles might be, unless they’re also built with AI and machine learning baked right in, mistakes can be propogated and opportunities for outperformance can be missed.”
“With the launch of AIEQ, we’re not only bringing our new fund to market,” said Art Amador, co-founder and COO of EquBot. “We believe we’re pioneering a whole new investment category; one that will soon have investors and advisors diversifiying their portfolios among passive, active and AI approaches.”
“Artificial Intelligence is making life better for individuals as its application expands across industries,” said Sam Masucci, CEO and Founder of ETF Managers Group. “We are excited to be the first asset manager to bring AI into portfolio management and the ETF space, providing investors with another first-to-market ETF product.”
AIEQ may invest in the securities of companies of any market capitalization and will have an expense ratio of 0.75%.
“Everyday, there is more information, not less,” added Amador. “That information explosion has made the jobs of portfolio managers, equity analysts, quantitative investors and even index builders more challenging. New technology in artificial intelligence helps solve those challenges and we’re very pleased to be bringing AIEQ to market to make an AI approach to investing available to all.”
About EquBot LLC
EquBot LLC is an IBM Global Entrepreneur company specializing in creating solutions specifically designed to eliminate wealth-based discrimination throughout financial markets using innovative investment technology. EquBot was born during an MBA classroom discussion between the co-founders at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.
About ETF Managers Group
ETFMG is a leading Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) private label services company. ETFMG offers a full range of ETF product services to the asset management community including commodity pool ETPs as well as both active and passive ETF funds. The services provided include product operations, portfolio management, regulatory, financial and compliance management. ETF Managers Group offers active marketing and dedicated wholesale services for all ETF product types through its registered broker dealer ETFMG Financial LLC. For more information on ETF Managers Group visit www.etfmg.com.
Carefully consider the Fund’s investment objectives, risk factors, charges, and expenses before investing. This and additional information can be found in the Fund’s prospectus, which may be obtained by calling 1-844-ETF-MGRS (1-844-383-6477), or by visiting www.equbotetf.com. Read the prospectus carefully before investing.
Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. Shares of any ETF are bought and sold at market price (not NAV), may trade at a discount or premium to NAV and are not individually redeemed from the Fund. Brokerage commissions will reduce returns. Narrowly focused investments typically exhibit higher volatility.
The Fund issues and redeems shares on a continuous basis, at NAV, only in blocks of 50,000 shares (“Creation Units”), principally in-kind for securities included in the Fund’s portfolio, and only Authorized Participants (typically, broker-dealers) may purchase or redeem Creation Units.
The Fund is actively-managed and may not meet its investment objective based on the success or failure of the Equbot Model to identify investment opportunities.
Some of the models used by the Adviser for the Fund are predictive in nature. The use of predictive models has inherent risks. When Models and Data prove to be incorrect or incomplete, any decisions made in reliance thereon expose the Fund to potential risks. For example, by relying on Models and Data, the Adviser may be induced to buy certain investments at prices that are too high, to sell certain other investments at prices that are too low, or to miss favorable opportunities altogether. Similarly, any hedging based on faulty Models and Data may prove to be unsuccessful.
The fund is distributed by ETFMG Financial LLC, which is not affiliated with Equbot. ETF Managers Group LLC and ETFMG Financial LLC are wholly owned subsidiaries of Exchange Traded Managers Group LLC (collectively, “ETFMG”).
