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I’m not a day trader. Back in the 1990s, I dabbled in cocoa futures trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange using Globex. However, you may have noticed that I am not a commodity millionaire. Still, I know something about the stock market, and I think Perplexity AI, a new finance-centric platform from a fast-growing AI company, might be useful for novice stock traders.
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What is Perplexity Finance?
Perplexity Finance aims to provide users with a comprehensive suite of tools to research company financials, stock price performance, and industry comparisons. This tool has a variety of features, including real-time stock price information, historical earnings reports, industry peer comparisons, and detailed analysis of company financials.
Overview of Perplexity Finance.
Screenshot by Steven Vaughan-Nichols/ZDNET
Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas highlighted the platform’s user interface, calling it “just plain fun.” That’s all well and good, the interface is easy to use, but no one wants their AI illusion to turn into a gambling nightmare when they’re betting money on the market.
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Perplexity hasn’t released any details about how the new service will work, but I took a closer look at the site’s results. It turns out that the hard data is not from a large-scale language model (LLM), but rather from the well-regarded Financial Modeling Prep (FMP). FMP’s claim to fame is that it provides “the most accurate financial data available on the market.” This data is made available through application programming interfaces (APIs) to a number of clients, including Perplexity, and from there to you.
Therefore, Perplexity Finance’s data appears to be more reliable than you would expect from an AI company. Specifically, this tool provides:
Real-time stock prices and price tracking Historical earnings data and visualization Comparison with peers Basic financial analysis tools
However, Mr. Srinivas warned about X: “More work needs to be done to make it a complete end-to-end market research tool: bringing in 10Q and 10K to enable deeper exploration of proxies, annual reports, and revenue. ”
As he says, there is work to be done. For example, just accessing Perplexity Finance is a bit difficult. This tool is available only on desktop. Not available on smartphones. When using Perplexity’s Focus feature set for finance, no new features are used. Instead, use Perplexity AI’s regular LLM to tackle financial questions.
How to use Perplexity Finance
To use the new stock mode, you need a Perplexity Pro account. This costs $20 per month. In that account, search for the word “stocks” and the company name. If your results start with recent stock price graphs, you’re on the right track. Below the results, there is a link to “Company Name Details”.
Also: I used the free version of Perplexity.ai for coding tests
Perplexity plans to add more data in the future. In a quiet press post, Perplexity announced a strategic partnership with Crunchbase. According to Megh Gautam, Crunchbase’s chief product officer, Crunchbase plans to bring “powerful private company data to Perplexity’s Enterprise Pro users through our data licensing API.” The partnership will provide Crunchbase with proprietary data that “covers difficult-to-obtain company statistics and financial information for privately held companies.”
In addition, Perplexity has partnered with business data company FactSet to bring its trusted data to “our mutual customers,” Kristi Karnofsky, FactSet’s vice president and head of dealmakers and wealth, said in a statement. said. Businesses gather information and insights through a vast repository of robust structured and unstructured financial data. ”
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To access these data sources, you must be an Enterprise Pro account user with a FactSet or Crunchbase subscription. Enterprise Pro is available for companies with fewer than 250 employees for $40 per seat per month or $400 per seat per year. If you are a large company, you will need to contact Perplexity directly.
This move positions Perplexity to compete more directly with established financial data providers and search engines. The company has made great strides in the AI-powered search market, with chatbots gaining popularity for their ability to summarize search results, provide quotes, and help users refine their queries.
As Perplexity expands into the financial sector, it will be interesting to see how the company navigates the competitive environment and how it deals with ongoing concerns about copyright infringement. If Perplexity Finance is successful, its achievements will go a long way in cementing the company’s position as a leading AI player.
However, at this stage of the game, Perplexity Finance needs further refinement before it can be called a true competitor to existing stock analysis programs such as Stock Rover, WallStreetZen, and TradingView.
