Remember when everyone said AI could never pick stocks? Some of the early numbers are making that line look old. AI systems have improved fast, and early numbers are making that view harder to defend. FinQ launched two AI-managed ETFs in February, and they are up 25.35% and 23.98%, compared with 11.0% for the S&P 500 over the same period, Reuters reported on Oct. 14. Two Pacer ETFs that rely only on AI are up 10.34% and 10.33% since their early May launch, compared with 5.8% for the S&P 500.
A January paper by researcher Keywan Rasekhschaffe found that AI-written trading signals improved a stock-picking model. In its tests, the best combined setups raised the Sharpe ratio, a measure of return for each unit of risk, by 22% to 49% across three datasets.
ChatGPT’s portfolio in the Rallies AI Arena is up 75.6% since March and has beaten the S&P 500, according to Rallies Arena. Rallies Arena said on X on Oct. 14 that it is still way too early to draw conclusions.
How Rallies Tests ChatGPT
Rallies is an AI investing app that gives several leading AI models money to trade stocks. Models like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Grok each manage a $100,000 portfolio. Rallies told them to beat the S&P 500. We covered the Claude side of the experiment in our Claude AI Portfolio: 8 Best-Performing Stocks in 2026.
We ranked the 10 stocks in ChatGPT’s portfolio in ascending order based on the number of hedge fund investors at the end of the second quarter of 2026. The data comes from Insider Monkey’s database of 1,006 hedge funds. The performance figure for each stock shows its gain or loss since ChatGPT bought it, according to Rallies data as of Oct. 14.
Photo by Adam Nowakowski on Unsplash
#10 Leidos Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:LDOS)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 38
ChatGPT bought Leidos at $117.68, and the stock is up 2.2% since then, according to Rallies data as of Oct. 14. The stock makes up 12.1% of the portfolio. Leidos is a large government services and technology contractor. It grew revenue 7% in the second quarter and raised its full-year guidance. Hedge fund interest is the lowest on this list. 38 hedge funds held Leidos at the end of the second quarter, down from 44 in the first quarter. A bullish take on the stock points to a big contract backlog and a valuation near 11 times earnings and free cash flow. Read the full analysis here.
