An analysis of South African machine learning investment company NMRQL's results

[Hanno Labuschagne]

An analysis of South African machine learning investment company NMRQL's results

NMRQL Research – a fintech company co-founded by Michael Jordaan – launched South Africa’s first machine-learning powered unit trust fund in October 2017.

What made the fund unique is that it uses machine learning to drive research, analysis, and stock selection.

At the time, NMRQL said the machine-learning powered, computational investment process allows it to discover hidden, patterns in underlying big data.

 

[cguy]

What made the fund unique is that it uses machine learning to drive research, analysis, and stock selection.

Lol. Welcome to the ‘80s.

 

[Ancalagon]

Lol. Welcome to the ‘80s.

I would have liked more details on what specific machine learning techniques they are using.

I feel that machine learning is a bit of an overused term. You can write a Python script less than 100 lines long which will do it for you, for some definition of machine learning.

 

[cguy]

I would have liked more details on what specific machine learning techniques they are using.

I feel that machine learning is a bit of an overused term. You can write a Python script less than 100 lines long which will do it for you, for some definition of machine learning.

Yup, trivial to make the claim and then funnily enough it’s a surprisingly involved statistical exercise to even figure out if it’s better than a random bet or a trivial “go long” strategy. Most actually get this analysis wrong.