What if AI could explain investing, compare stocks and tell you what to look at next? Would you actually trust it with your money?
We already use AI for plenty of everyday tasks, from improving CVs to planning trips. But investing feels different. A bad restaurant recommendation is annoying; a bad investment decision can cost real money.
So, would young adults trust AI to help them invest?
In the third episode of DollarsAndSense’s Growing Up series, hosts Feng Yi and Duncan sat down with university students Jaime and Troy from OCBC to discuss where AI can genuinely help with investing, and where our own judgement still matters.
Watch the full DollarsAndSense: Growing Up episode here.
We Trust AI With Simple Questions. Stock Picks Are Another Story
The episode begins with a game: would you trust AI with different parts of your life?
Improving a CV was an easy yes. Feng Yi felt AI was good at “beautifying” language, while Jaime agreed it could help with the fluff, as long as the final result did not sound obviously AI-generated.
Helping with day-to-day budgeting was less convincing. As Feng Yi pointed out, AI does not automatically know how much the teh peng near her house costs, or whether she feels like having matcha instead that day.
Then came the bigger question: would they trust AI to choose stocks?
Feng Yi landed somewhere in the middle. She would use AI as a starting point, then do her own research. Troy felt similarly, saying he would take input from AI but still cross-check the information before making a decision.
The group was much more comfortable with basic questions. What is the difference between investing and trading? How does the S&P 500 compare with the Straits Times Index (STI)?
Those feel safer because AI is mainly explaining existing information. But when Duncan asked, “What’s the next NVIDIA?”, the confidence disappeared.
“How would AI know?” Feng Yi said.
That probably sums up how many of us should think about AI and investing. Explaining what already exists is one thing. Predicting what happens next is another.
AI Can Make Investing Feel Less Intimidating
For Jaime, investing is still something she knows she probably should start doing, but has not yet begun. Part of the problem is how much there seems to be to learn. Stocks, ETFs, market cycles, fundamental analysis, technical analysis and financial jargon can make the first step feel more complicated than it needs to be.
Troy felt this was one area where AI could be genuinely useful. If there is a financial term you do not understand, you can simply ask. If there is a long report you do not want to comb through line by line, AI can help summarise the parts that may be relevant.
Jaime said that if she were using AI to start investing, she would probably ask it to break down the steps she should take, then do the actual research herself. That makes AI useful for a specific problem beginners often face: not knowing what they do not know.
Instead of staring at a sea of information, they can use AI to find a starting point.
Read also: 7 AI Investing Tools Every Investor Should Know About
So They Asked AI What A 23-Year-Old Should Do With $1,000
Duncan then asked AI what a 23-year-old should do with $1,000 to start investing.
The first suggestion was not actually to invest. AI said to invest in yourself first. Its logic was that spending $1,000 on skills that could increase your income by a few thousand dollars a year might have a bigger impact than chasing a 10% return on $1,000 in the stock market.
AI also suggested focusing on building the habit of investing, considering broad-market ETFs instead of trying to pick individual winners, keeping some cash aside and ignoring scary headlines.
For a beginner, the answer sounded sensible. But Troy disagreed with the idea of simply ignoring negative headlines.
Periods of fear caused by wars, geopolitical tensions or other market shocks can sometimes create opportunities to buy at lower prices. That does not mean every dip is a buying opportunity, but it shows why a neat AI answer may still miss important nuance.
AI can provide a framework. It should not automatically become the final word.
Sometimes The Bigger Risk Is FOMO
Even if AI gives us useful information, investing still comes with another challenge: our emotions.
Imagine buying a stock because the analysis looks good. Then a war, trade dispute or other unexpected event hits the market and the stock falls from $100 to $80. A new investor may immediately start wondering whether the original decision was wrong.
Troy said this is where panic selling can happen. The opposite can happen too, when prices are rising and everyone around us seems to be making money.
Knowing that an investment is risky does not automatically make us immune to hype. AI can even make that false confidence worse if we use it to keep searching for reasons to support something we already want to buy.
Investing Regularly Can Take Some Emotion Out Of It
One way to reduce that second-guessing is to make investing more systematic. Troy brought up dollar-cost averaging, where an investor puts in a fixed amount regularly instead of trying to predict the perfect time to buy.
OCBC’s Blue Chip Investment Plan (BCIP), for example, allows investors to invest regularly in selected Singapore-listed shares and ETFs from $100 a month. The idea is simple. Instead of deciding every month whether the market is too high, too low or about to crash, you continue investing according to a plan.
For those who do not want to pick individual stocks, there are also more hands-off approaches such as RoboInvest, where a portfolio is built and managed based on an investor’s risk tolerance. That may suit young adults who want to start investing without feeling that they need to become part-time analysts after work.
Read also: How Is AI Reshaping The Financial Services Industry?
AI Can Help Us Ask Better Questions
By the end of the episode, the conclusion was not that young investors should avoid AI.
There are plenty of ways it can help. AI can explain unfamiliar terms, summarise information, compare investments and help beginners work out what they should research next. As Feng Yi pointed out, someone new to investing may not even know what questions to ask. They might simply type, “What should I invest in?” and treat the answer like advice.
A better approach is to use AI to ask more useful questions: What risks should I consider? How are these two options different? What information could be missing? Does this investment fit my time horizon and tolerance for losses?
AI can help us think through those questions. But it cannot decide how we will react when the market falls, or whether we need the money next year. It also does not have to live with the consequences if the investment goes wrong.
So perhaps the better question is not whether we would trust AI with our money, but what part of the decision we would trust it with.
For learning and research, AI can be useful. The final call should still be ours.
