Stock trading has gone mainstream lately, with the likes of GameStop, AMC, and BlackBerry becoming viral picks.

While millions of retail investors have just started paying attention to the stock market, investing is thousands of years old, with the idea of a stock exchange existing since 1602.

In other words, there’s a lot to learn, and investing isn’t a walk in the park. Instead of hopping on the latest stock bandwagon, you can use AI to help make data-driven investment decisions.

If you’re not interested in trading, there are a wide-range of other applications of AI in finance, such as predicting loan defaulting, predicting fraud, and more.

Free Course

The University of Michigan has a free, online course titled Innovations in Investment Technology: Artificial Intelligence.

This relatively short, 11-hour course will teach you to:

• “Recognize the strengths and weaknesses of human financial advisors and investors.
• Explain the business model of robo/AI-advisors.
• Identify the relationship between identifiable firm characteristics and average returns.
• Build a diversified portfolio based on attitudes toward risk.”

You’ll be taught by two University of Michigan instructors; Andrew Wu, an Assistant Professor of Technology and Operations and Finance; and Robert Dittmar, a Professor of Finance.

While this 11-hour course obviously won’t make you an expert, it’s a good place to start. There’s an overwhelming abundance of options to learn AI investing, and this can be your jumping-off point.

Get Certified

While the free option doesn’t come with a certificate, you can pay $39 USD per month to get certificates with your course completions.

In fact, you can even start a 7-day free trial, and if you complete the course within those 7 days, you’ll still receive the certificate.

The certificate is simply a PDF document indicating that you took the Coursera course. It’s easy to share on social media or add to your LinkedIn profile.

Beyond certificates

That said, the certificate isn’t going to make a huge difference if you’re hunting for a job.

Employers want to see hard, practical skills, which can be demonstrated better with a portfolio than a certificate.

For example, you could build a roboadvisor and put it on your GitHub, or write articles about AI investing, or even get an internship in the field. These are all more likely to boost your application in the eyes of a potential employer.

Next Steps

As mentioned, this course is basically an introduction to AI investing. You won’t become the next RenTec in 11 hours, but there are tons of options to dive deeper.

Some intermediate and advanced options on Coursera include:

• Guided Tour of Machine Learning in Finance
• Machine Learning for Trading Specialization
• Investment Management with Python and Machine Learning Specialization
• Practical Time Series Analysis

Summary

If you want to learn AI for finance, now’s a better time than ever. There’s an abundance of free online learning resources, and this University of Michigan course is a great place to start, with a number of free options to dive deeper, depending on your interests.