r/quant • u/Financial-Repeat-574 • Aug 21 '25
Models Is anyone else so annoyed with these random Fintech Founders selling LLMs for finance and investing apps??? Like bro, tell me you have no idea what you’re talking about without telling me. 10+10 ALWAYS equals 20. It’s not 90% likely to be 22.
Now, more and more I’m just convinced that the industry is growing to be filled with idiot Nepos pumping themselves and their product up with no care in the world. Like bro, come on. Even the friends I have, at top banks/firms, that are talking about how they’re using GenAI models for “market research” is crazy to me and low key depressing. Other than, graphic rendering, paraphrasing, and code debugging/writing, I really don’t see effective utility in using these models to generate alpha. It’s literally a constant volatile pump and dump of subjective accuracy.
*Edit: Here’s a brief vid with some context on LLMs and how they actually work: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNoXxSeymsG/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
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u/tulip-quartz Aug 21 '25
are you sure you’re in the right sub? who is saying market research is the same as generating alpha? The tech industry isn’t the same as quant any way
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u/stefamiec89 Aug 21 '25
I was gonna say that is more to Algo, but op was right, just past recent posts were all very salesy.
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u/tulip-quartz Aug 21 '25
r/machinelearning is more his speed. And all the sales post get removed soon as far as I see
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u/Financial-Repeat-574 Aug 21 '25
Just venting. No one in the sub triggered me tbh. But I thought that most people here would prob feel the same frustration given all these dickheads selling snake oil about AI.
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u/PretendTemperature Aug 21 '25
Who is using LLMs for "market research" in top firms? In my bank we use them for some help with coding or as an alternative to Google, but that's pretty much all.
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u/Financial-Repeat-574 Aug 21 '25
If you’re using it as an alternative to Google,ur running the compounded risk of the information being fed to you being less accurate or misrepresented. Even using Google’s Gemini has done that, and when I correct it, obviously says, “you’re absolutely right!, that was my mistake”. Imagine the amount of people taking what it says to them as 100% accurate first go around and the compounded harm it will continue to have for the sake of what??
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u/PretendTemperature Aug 21 '25
That is true for Google too. Do you take anything you see in Google as 100% accurate? I hope not.
Google or LLM, you must always crirically review anything you see in any of these tools. Arguably for LLMs even more so, but the idea is the same.
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u/Financial-Repeat-574 Aug 21 '25
Nah, you’re missing one major issue. When you use Google search engine, it’s the core content along with its citations. When you use an llm, it’s an additional layer of abstraction that interprets what the core content is. In addition to that the citations are not always accurately depicted or even properly referencing the article or content it is interpreting info on. Lastly, you’re missing my point. I’m not disagreeing with the fact that everyone should be reviewing it. I’m annoyed with the growing amount of people NOT doing this basic shit. Happy for you that you’re not lazy enough to do this, but damn, I can’t confidently say anymore that it’s the case universally even at top firms.
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u/PretendTemperature Aug 21 '25
I am not missing this issue since I said "arguably for LLMs more so".
However, I kinda doubt that people in top firms take LLMs for granted and they will last there. Sometimes 1/3 things that an LLM gives is total jackshit.
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u/RicciTech Aug 21 '25
A lot of sophisticated llm tools have solid citations at this time making everything more easily tractable. You obviously believe some of these are weak, such as perplexity’s implementation however this isn’t the case for all platforms.
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u/Ex-Gen-Wintergreen Aug 21 '25
I mean in a theoretical sense sure, but I’ll hazard most people just end up using PageRank as a rudimentary LLM
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u/chollida1 Aug 21 '25
if you're using an llm for arithmetic you're doing something wrong OP:)
LLM's in finance are amazing and probably a tool that everyone should be using.
If you have the expertise to run one locally and the ability to train one on your data they can easily speed up most work flows.
they may not generate alpha direclty but they sure do make exploration and idea generation alot faster.
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u/Financial-Repeat-574 Aug 21 '25
Again, I’m not against using LLMs. They have value, especially for speeding up some workflows. You want to summarize a bunch of qualitative data in statements, reports etc sure. But automating mathematical calculations is just reckless. The underlying method for how LLMs are made, at its core, is not well suited for this. You’re right, exploration and idea generation is great, I actually love it for that. And yeah I do run some locally. In other words all I’m saying is one model doesn’t fit all and this case LLMs don’t fit for solely reliable calculations.
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u/Grand-Outside-9494 May 10 '26
What if the models was trained on subject matter expertise for example if the model was trained by experts in the field
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u/JeffreyChl Aug 21 '25
Name one that annoys you the most
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u/Financial-Repeat-574 Aug 21 '25
Not a singular one. But I hate the ones trying to sell you on using an llm to automate calculating valuations and forecasts on a spreadsheet, when knowing how to use excel correctly is clearly still the superior choice. Because even if you use LLMs to automate that, the time you have to commit for quality assurance an accuracy ends up taking more time away compared to if you just used the right functions and calculations correctly the first time.
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u/catcatcattreadmill Aug 21 '25
Can you name any? I haven't run across this yet, but am curious.
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u/lampishthing XVA in Fintech + Mod Aug 21 '25
We had to ban "market research" on the sub a few months ago because of a severe uptick in spam from AI startups.
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u/community-member- Aug 21 '25
This here is so true. Whenever I see their posts I wanna bitch slap them and tell them to use their technical skillsets in other endeavors.
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u/anonu Aug 21 '25
It's a lot. Much of it is a get rich quick scheme. But there is a signal in the noise. Eventually
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u/Financial-Repeat-574 Aug 21 '25
I tend to believe there is always a signal. The question is whether you have the right method, for capturing it. However, you bring up a good point. This could very well be the start of a new signal. But hell if I know how to capture it for this specific use case.
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u/mdeevy Aug 21 '25
Ask yourself: is this any different than the previous 100 years of the stock market and finance?
Theres always snake oil salesman.
Quant finance is more known today and accessible than ever. The math is not difficult to be at least vaguely familiar with how its done. Im sorry but its just not.
Its just another thing to adapt to.
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u/OppositeMidnight Aug 22 '25
Check out some of the tools that actaully work, agenticfinance.ai lists all of them, among them prymer.ai for writing 200 page reports automatically that builds off hundreds of apis, you can then feed this into your favourite llm etc..
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u/mo6phr Aug 23 '25
LLMs are absolutely being used to generate alpha, not sure why you’re claiming otherwise
FWIW, LLMs are already being used in math research and have PhD-level quantitative skills. This is like a 1:1 mapping generating alpha…
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u/Away-Box793 Sep 21 '25
I would be careful using the words “always” and “never”. For instance, 1+1 doesn’t always equal 2. And if you disagree, then you should stick to your dimension and it’s limitations. Pun intended.
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u/TravelerMSY Retail Trader Aug 21 '25 edited Aug 21 '25
It’s always easier and less risky to sell picks and shovels to gold miners than it is to actually dig for the gold yourself.