Trader Uses Perplexity Chatbot To Create F&O Strategy. Here's What Happened

Rahul Mathur, an Indian trader, put Perplexity Finance's newly launched Indian market data feature to the test: with a Rs 25-lakh corpus and an F&O strategy request. The results, he says, were mixed.

The F&O plan suggested by the AI tool "was not viable" for actual trading. While it identified interesting sectors and companies, Perplexity overlooked two key nuances of the Indian market: minimum lot sizes in F&O contracts and whether the companies were even on the F&O list.

"Sure, my prompt could have been better (fair counterargument)," Mathur noted, adding that the system should eventually improve with training on SEBI rules.

The equity picks also showed "very strong recency bias." Having recently probed the tool on Diamond Power and Suzlon Power which are both in his portfolio, Mathur found the AI recommending the same two stocks from a universe of over 1,000. "Either I'm a genius (I'm not) or Perplexity is suffering from recency bias (sic)," he said, comparing it to a flaw even human analysts need training to overcome.

Still, there were bright spots. Users can now add Indian stocks to a personal tracker alongside automated recommendations, said Mathur, calling it a "nifty touch". Search, however, remains finicky, requiring exact company names, and price alerts don't yet work for Indian stocks, he noted.

"Overall, for a Day 0 release, Perplexity Finance for an Indian retail investor like me is already very powerful," Mathur concluded, crediting Airtel's partnership for making it free. "It really gives every Indian retail investor a superhuman investment researcher in their pocket. Kudos team Perplexity."