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Recently, an increasing number of people have started to use artificial intelligence (AI) for investing, even minors have begun to "try it out." Nathan Smith, a 17-year-old high school student, is one of the bold experimenters. Inspired by the constant ads, he decided to conduct a "human vs. machine" challenge with a few hundred dollars to see if AI can really make profits in the stock market.
The experiment started in June 2025. Smith selected two AI models—GPT-4o and DeepSeek—to help him choose stocks and make trades. He gave both AI the same instruction: to invest with $100 in micro-cap stocks listed in the United States with a market value below $300 million. As the experiment progressed, the results were unexpected.
In the initial stage, DeepSeek invested all the funds into the market, but soon suffered a loss of 18.06%. In contrast, GPT-4o was more cautious, achieving an impressive return of 6.72% initially. The difference behind this was mainly due to the different data update frequencies used by the two AI models. GPT-4o had real-time data access, while DeepSeek could only rely on outdated data.
As time went on, GPT-4o's performance continued to improve. After two months of investment, its portfolio increased by 25.2%, far exceeding the 4.5% of the S&P 500 index during the same period. One successful operation even allowed GPT-4o's investment returns to increase by more than 10% within a week. Smith was surprised by the performance of this AI and also realized that these experiments do not constitute real investment advice because their scale and duration are relatively limited.
It is worth noting that AI stock trading is not an isolated case. Many studies show that ChatGPT has certain predictive capabilities in assessing the attractiveness and return rate of stocks, which provides new ideas for future investment strategies. However, Smith also reminded everyone that although the experiment showed promising results, investing should still be done with caution and avoid blindly following the trend.