A recap of the Private Wealth Podcast featuring Tony Parish.
The Short Answer: Can AI Make Investors Better or Does It Just Help Make Bad Decisions Faster?
According to Tony Parish, Chief Investment Officer at Alphastar Capital Management, it does both. AI is a tool, and it amplifies whatever the person using it already does. Good investors who use it well get better. Bad investors who use it will mostly become worse. The best results come from pairing human judgment with machine speed.
That idea anchors a wide-ranging episode of The Private Wealth Podcast, hosted by Vance Barse, founder of YDF Wealth. The two met on a four-day canoe and fishing trip at the annual Shadow Fed meeting, also known as Camp Kotok, and picked the conversation up on camera. Below are the key takeaways, organized by the questions investors are asking most.
Key Takeaways
- AI amplifies existing investor behavior, good or bad. It can also fact check you and flag risks you did not know to look for.
- Humans plus machines beat either one alone, an idea Parish ties to Garry Kasparov’s “centaur” concept after the chess champion lost to Deep Blue.
- AI is likely to push investors toward the extremes, moving many from the middle of the pack to the top or the bottom.
- The biggest long-term market impact of AI may be sorting winners from losers among the companies spending trillions on AI build-out.
- Psychology can overpower fundamentals, so investors should not fight a narrative the market has latched onto.
- Back-tested results deserve skepticism because of self-selection bias.
- The federal deficit has become a kitchen table topic, and Parish expects 2026 through 2028 to keep it in focus.
- For any investor, the first question is always the same: what is the goal?
Can AI Make Investors Better or Just Faster at Making Mistakes?
Parish compares AI to any other powerful tool. Used well, it can alert you to things you never thought to check, challenge your assumptions, and process far more data than a person can. Used poorly, it simply speeds up bad habits. His point is that the outcome depends on where you aim it and how you use it.
He also draws on Kasparov’s centaur idea: a human working with a machine outperforms a human alone and outperforms a machine alone. Machines are excellent at absorbing massive datasets, running models, and surfacing patterns the eye cannot see. Humans are better at understanding fear and greed, the two emotions behind the extremes of market behavior.
Where Will AI Have the Biggest Impact on Markets in the Next 5 to 10 Years?
Parish points to a familiar pattern: new technology tends to be overestimated in the short term and underestimated in the long term. In his view, the largest impact over five to ten years will be a shake-out among the hyperscalers and other companies investing billions, and in aggregate trillions, in AI infrastructure.
He compares the moment to earlier build-outs such as railroads, automobiles, and the dot-com era, when seemingly dominant players were later forgotten. Some of today’s leaders will win big. Others will be acquired, forced to change, or flame out. Nobody knows yet which is which, but the outcome will matter a great deal for investment portfolios.
Can AI Identify Risk Better Than a Human?
It depends on how you define risk. If risk means a statistical probability, such as a move of three standard deviations or more, machines can calculate it faster. But Parish defines risk more broadly as the tendency of markets to behave in unexpected ways, which usually happens when fear or greed dominates. AI does not understand those emotions well, so humans using machines are better at reading the true risk environment than machines working alone.
What Happens When Everyone Uses the Same AI Investing Tools?
Parish explains that the more people use an investment technology, the more that technology becomes the market. He uses technical analysis as an example: it tends to work when many people use it, because the signal gets stronger relative to the noise. If AI-driven models guide more buy, sell, and trim decisions over the next decade, markets will increasingly reflect AI adoption. Professional money managers need to follow fundamentals while also staying aware of that trend so they are not caught as outliers.
Psychology Versus Fundamentals: Why Narratives Move Markets
Trained on Wall Street to read financial statements and build discounted cash flow models, Parish says he came to see psychology as far more powerful than fundamentals. His example is Tesla, whose market value, in his view, is hard to justify on earnings and market share alone and instead reflects the market’s belief in its founder. He applies the same idea to SpaceX.
His takeaway is a twist on a classic market saying. Instead of “don’t fight the Fed,” he says, “don’t fight the psychology.” Once the market latches onto a narrative, it can steamroll rational fundamentals regardless of what your spreadsheet says.
What Is Quantitative Investing, and What Do People Get Wrong About It?
Quantitative investing means pulling in large amounts of data, cleaning it, and using it to answer questions about investments. Parish, a computer programmer who has built machine learning models for years, considers himself a quant.
The common misconception is that quant models are black boxes that inevitably run amok. Parish agrees there are black boxes in the industry, meaning outputs that cannot be explained, and says those should not be trusted blindly. He cites the lead-up to the 2008 housing crisis, when risky mortgage-backed securities were rated as virtually risk-free. He also warns about back-tests: because only strong results reach an investor’s desk, there is built-in self-selection bias, and a great back-test does not guarantee future performance. Quant analysis works best when you ask the right questions and stay humble about the data.
Which Investing Rules of Thumb Are Outdated?
Parish says many popular sayings sound good as bumper stickers but do not fit a real portfolio. He names “sell in May and go away” and “cut your losers and let your winners run” as examples. People have different goals and risk tolerances, so they need specific metrics and practices built around what they actually need, not generic platitudes from a talking head.
The Market Signal Not Enough People Are Watching: The Federal Deficit
Asked for one signal that deserves more attention, Parish chose the federal deficit. He notes that in the 1990s there was talk of surpluses, and that today even his barber asks about it. He does not call it a 2026 emergency and says he is not an alarmist, because policymakers have many tools if there is the will to use them. But he believes meaningful action will likely come only in a crisis, and expects 2026, 2027, and 2028 to be years when the deficit becomes a major talking point for policymakers, voters, investors, savers, and retirees.
Where Can AI Help High Net Worth Investors, and Where Do You Still Need a Human?
For investors with roughly two to twenty-five million dollars in liquid assets, Parish says the conversation shifts from growth alone to growth with protection and preservation. He sees AI helping in three ways:
- As an investment theme, through companies building AI.
- As a tool to create or optimize a financial plan and portfolio allocation.
- As a way to work with advisors, consultants, and CPAs so no available tool goes unused.
He described a product that can run a person’s tax return against roughly 250 to 260 tax optimization strategies, a task no single person could do alone. His conclusion is the same theme as the rest of the episode: advisor plus AI, working together, makes a tremendous difference.
What Will the Next Generation of Wealthy Investors Expect From Advisors?
As baby boomers transfer wealth to Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z, Parish expects the biggest shift to be customization. Custom indexing, such as a portfolio that resembles the S&P 500 but reflects personal values, used to be available mainly to the very wealthy. Better trading tools and software are democratizing it. Whether someone wants a biblically responsible approach, an environmentally focused one, or to avoid certain industries, the next generation will see this as table stakes. If an advisor will not offer it, plenty of others will.
The One Question to Ask Before Investing a Dollar
When asked what he would ask a client with ten million dollars in liquid assets and a business, Parish did not hesitate: what is the goal? Ten million dollars could be more than enough for someone who wants a quiet, modest life, and not nearly enough for someone with philanthropic plans, dependents, or ambitions to invest in businesses. The goal determines the plan, the portfolio, and how assets should be managed.
About the Guest: Tony Parish
Tony Parish is the Chief Investment Officer of Alphastar Capital Management, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and works from Austin, Texas. Before Wall Street, he pursued a career as a professional musician in New York City. He is the author of Singular Links: The Innovator’s Guide to Compounding Connections, published in 2026 and available in print, as an ebook, and as an audiobook narrated by Parish himself. He says he wrote and narrated every word without AI. He is most active on LinkedIn and says he answers every message.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can AI make you a better investor?
Yes, if you use it as a tool alongside sound judgment. Tony Parish says AI can fact check and gut check investors and flag things they did not know to look for, but it also amplifies bad habits.
What is the centaur theory in investing?
It is the idea, associated with Garry Kasparov, that a human working with a machine outperforms either one alone. Parish applies it to advisors and investors using AI.
Is AI better than humans at identifying market risk?
Not entirely. Machines calculate statistical risk quickly, but Parish argues humans are better at reading fear and greed, which drive unexpected market moves.
What is quantitative investing?
It is investing based on analyzing large amounts of data with models to answer questions and make decisions. Parish cautions that unexplained black-box outputs and over-trusted back-tests can lead to poor decisions.
Why does Tony Parish say psychology beats fundamentals?
He argues that once the market latches onto a narrative, it can override earnings and valuation models, using Tesla and SpaceX as examples.
What should high net worth investors ask before choosing a portfolio?
Start with the goal. Parish says defining what the money needs to accomplish is the most important question before any decision about the plan or portfolio.
Where can I learn more about Tony Parish?
Visit Alphastar Capital Management online, find Singular Links on Amazon or your preferred book retailer, or connect with him on LinkedIn.
Disclosure: This content is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment, tax, or legal advice. The views expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of YDF Wealth. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. Past performance does not guarantee future results.