Cybernetic approach to investment decision making

This paper summarizes the results of our research into applications of cybernetic concepts and artificial intelligence techniques to investment analysis: it outlines the philosophy underlying the cybernetic approach to market forecasting and investment selection. This approach is computer oriented--it enables us to automate or program directly the complex judgmental aspects of investment decision making. The cybernetic approach alleviates some deficiencies of conventional statistical methods. Specifically, it (1) explicitly includes the time dimension into investment analysis, (2) is based on methods for decision making under uncertainty rather than risk, (3) yields computationally feasible methods for coping with the high complexity in investment analysis, and (4) yields decisions that are optimal rather than satisficing, i.e. performance of the Cybernetic Investment Decision System (CIDS) gradually improves during its operation through learning from past experience. A simplified CIDS has been implemented and tested in actual investment analysis. The experimental results of these tests indicate that through the cybernetic approach quality of investment decisions can be improved.