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Can AI Pick Stocks? 4 AI Investing Apps to Try

By U.S. News & World Report

Stock-picking can be a risky endeavor, but investors do it anyway because the returns can be massive.

Buying Nvidia Corp. (ticker: NVDA) stock 10 years ago or Palantir Technologies Inc. (PLTR) shares three years ago would have netted incredible returns, and those types of opportunities can be portfolio-changing.

However, many of today’s investors are leaning into artificial intelligence investing apps and tools to give themselves an edge. These apps make it easy to discover stock ideas based on prompts. For instance, you can search “best growth stocks” in large language models like ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok, and each of those AI tools will list some growth stocks to buy.

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A March survey from Pew Research demonstrates how normalized AI has become in recent years. Approximately one-third of all adults use AI multiple times per day, and about half of adults under 50 say they interact with AI about once a day or more.

Many AI models use real-time data when presenting stock recommendations and assisting investors with their research. As this technology continues to evolve, it makes more sense for investors to use this resource when searching for the next great stock. However, it’s not just for speculators. People who are approaching retirement can turn to AI for investment ideas that align with their risk tolerance.

Some AI tools and research methods are better than others. These are some guidelines that can help you find optimal investing apps for your needs. Then, you’ll get a short list of AI tools that serve as good starters:

— What to look for in an AI investing tool.

— Is AI good at picking stocks?

— 4 AI stock-picking tools.

What to Look For in an AI Investing Tool

AI tools let you find stocks that align with your objectives, but there’s a subtle benefit that can significantly impact your long-term profits. Eldad Tamir, the founder and CEO of investment platform FINQ, explains a key perk of using AI tools: “AI eliminates the emotional bias that often affects investment decisions, leading to more rational and consistent choices based on data rather than gut feelings.”

A lack of emotional bias isn’t the only benefit of using AI tools. “AI can analyze vast amounts of data much faster than humans, identifying patterns and trends that might be overlooked,” says Tamir. “This allows for rapid decision-making in a market where timing can be everything.”

Speed and objectivity make for a good start. Here are some other features to look for in an AI tool:

— Versatility. Some AI tools let you ask more detailed questions, which can help you find optimal investments for your portfolio.

— Trading signals. Some AI products let you find stocks that recently reached or exceeded key technical indicators. Traders won’t have much luck with ChatGPT, Gemini or Grok because those AI tools do not offer automated trade execution like specialized bots. Some tools can make investments for you when stocks reach certain price points or technical lines, saving considerable time.

— Data availability. Does your AI stock picker let you see a stock’s volume, moving average and other details? Some AI tools have better information on your favorite stocks than others.

— Stock scoring. While this feature shouldn’t make or break your decision about an AI investing tool, a scoring system can tell you what the AI tool “thinks” about a stock. You should familiarize yourself with the methodology used to formulate the score before taking it seriously.

[READ: AI in Health Care: 8 Stocks to Buy in 2026]

Is AI Good at Picking Stocks?

Most investors would have balked at the idea of using artificial intelligence to pick stocks a few years ago, but rapid improvements in the technology have made it more viable. John O’Connell, founder and CEO at The Oasis Group, explains how AI has evolved and what separates it from human stock pickers: “AI is better than humans at calculating technical and fundamental parameters and much better than humans at pattern recognition. This is a huge advantage if the investor wants to make decisions based on solid analyses. Some examples of firms using AI to pick securities include Danelfin, AltIndex and TrendSpider.”

AI can pull from a treasure trove of historical analyses and data points that can take hours for an investor to obtain on their own. These tools also reduce the learning curve and make detailed stock research more accessible to retail investors.

Jack Fu, co-founder of investment firm Draco Evolution, highlights some of AI’s benefits while explaining that responsibility still falls on the investor: “When properly built and monitored, AI can add real value to stock selection. It processes torrents of information faster than any research team, reading macro indicators such as weekly jobless claims, changes in the yield curve, new orders indices, consumer sentiment and real-time money supply, then cross-checking them with price action and market tone. From that mosaic, it assigns probabilities to how a stock might move.”

4 AI Stock-Picking Tools

ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok serve as good research starting points. They have free versions that allow you to provide basic prompts and get detailed summaries of individual stock picks and analyses of recent earnings reports. Other AI tools cater more to picking stocks than fulfilling general prompts, however. These are some of the top AI stock-picking tools to consider:

Magnifi

Magnifi lets you connect your brokerage account to the app so you can use AI to analyze your portfolio. You can ask Magnifi’s AI assistant questions about your portfolio and finances to discover great stock picks and ways to save money. For instance, you can ask Magnifi if you are paying excess fees for your mutual funds.

Magnifi will review your holdings to see if your funds’ expense ratios are higher or lower than average, then give you the option to see several lower-fee alternatives. You can also ask how much exposure your portfolio has to a stock, and Magnifi will give you the exact percentage. This calculation includes any indirect exposure you have through mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, or ETFs.

Magnifi also matches its strategies to your risk tolerance. The app will make different recommendations based on whether you have a high risk tolerance or are risk-averse. Magnifi also provides commission-free trades so you can keep more money in your pocket.

TrendSpider

This technical analysis-based AI tool comes with a bot, asset insights, back-testing and other features that make it suitable for active traders. Back-testing lets you see how your current strategy would have performed in previous market cycles.

TrendSpider also includes real-time scanning and idea generation. You can search for market opportunities based on chart patterns, recent news, analyst actions and other parameters. The tool uses custom heat maps to display technical and fundamental data in a comprehensive, concise way.

While you can use TrendSpider’s data to inform trading decisions, you can also set up an AI “strategy bot” to make trades for you. Each trading bot is based on a predetermined algorithm. You control the inputs and can back-test any strategy before setting the trading bot loose.

Beyond automated execution, its AI assistant, called Sidekick, can use agentic, multi-step coding to build custom technical indicators for you; Sidekick also supports real-time U.S. options data (add-on required).

Danelfin

Danelfin helps investors make data-driven investment decisions and offers AI analyses for a wide range of stocks, ETFs and investment themes. Neal Shah, CEO of health equity research firm CareYaya Health Technologies, suggests Danelfin for investors who are comparing AI investing tools. Danelfin is a web-based platform, so it’s not technically a desktop or mobile app, but it can function the same way and can be accessed via desktop or mobile browsers.

“One app that stands out for AI stock-picking is Danelfin. What makes Danelfin special is its clear, straightforward approach and its impressive track record,” Shah says. “Unlike many stock-picking apps that rely on obfuscatory jargon, Danelfin is unambiguously user-friendly.”

Danelfin assigns each stock an AI-generated score from 1 to 10, which reflects its estimated likelihood of beating the market over the next three months, he explains. It also has a free plan that gives you a daily rundown of its 10 favorite stocks, which cover both U.S. and European equities. You can also access three-month price targets for thousands of stocks.

AInvest

AInvest offers several AI-powered “conversational” stock screeners and lets investors apply additional parameters. The app also lets you scan the news and validate ideas with back-testing.

The company’s chatbot, Aime, acts as an AI advisor. Aime lets you see key fundamental and technical indicators before buying or selling shares. It also offers clear explanations of important concepts and lists the pros and cons to help you make well-informed trades.

Aime can analyze your stock trades in other brokerage accounts as well, such as those from Fidelity and Robinhood.

More from U.S. News

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7 Best Cybersecurity Stocks to Buy

Can AI Pick Stocks? 4 AI Investing Apps to Try originally appeared on usnews.com

Update 06/02/26: This story was published at an earlier date and has been updated with new information.

A young mother’s killing went unsolved for nearly 40 years. Then the phone rang

By CNN
(CNN) — Melissa “Missy” Taylor Ellison’s killing remained a mystery for decades after she was found dead in her bedroom and her 13-month-old daughter was left crying in the living room.For years, Casie Ellison said she felt like she had to shrink herself and bury her feelings about the death of her mother.About 25 years after her mother was killed, those emotions were brought out when Casie realized her own daughter was now the same age she was when her mother died.“It just took me understanding that this is a little Casie,” she said. “I was seeing myself.”On July 8, more than 38 years after her mother’s killing in Jacksonville, Florida, the Clay County Sheriff’s Office received a call from a man wanting to come forward with information on a cold case.Gary Glowacz, a 70-year-old man from Middleburg, Florida, told a Clay County sergeant he wanted to “set things straight” on the death of 20-year-old Melissa Ellison, saying he had hit her with a log in search of money during a burglary, according to his arrest report.Glowacz told Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit detectives that in March he came across an article detailing Melissa Ellison’s case and realized he was responsible for her death, according to his arrest report.Glowacz was charged with second-degree murder and armed burglary with assault or battery, according to charging documents. His attorney and the district attorney declined to comment.He’s being held without bond in the Duval County Jail, and his next court appearance is set for Thursday.No arrests were made during the initial investigation in connection with Melissa Ellison’s killing, according to the arrest report.The night of her deathOn December 28, 1987, Melissa Ellison, who was known as Missy Taylor by her family and friends, was found dead in her bedroom by her two roommates, the arrest report says.The medical examiner’s office ruled the manner of death as a homicide and the cause of death to be blunt force trauma to the head at the time of the killing, according to the arrest report.Glowacz told detectives he was looking for money or items to sell to buy drugs, according to the arrest report detailing their interview with him. Glowacz lived only half a mile away from the home Melissa Ellison was living in, according to law enforcement databases. He was arrested on suspicion of a separate burglary the same day she was found dead, the arrest report says.Glowacz, who was 31 at the time, breached the home through a window and made his way into Melissa Ellison’s bedroom, where he found her lying on the bed with her daughter Casie, according to the arrest report. Using a log he found in the house, he struck her one time on the head by her neck, he told detectives. He then picked Casie up, placed her on the couch in the living room and went back into the bedroom to look for money under her mattress.In the arrest report, detectives noted Glowacz recounted details of the crime scene that were not released and were not included in the article he saw earlier this year.When asked why he was confessing to the killing decades later, he said that he was not aware the victim had died until he saw the article about the case.Casie Ellison said she was the first call detectives made that night after they arrested Glowacz.“It felt exactly how I was hoping that it would feel every time I imagined that it would be possible,” Casie Ellison said.Casie Ellison’s aunts Glenda Blandford and Sissy Bennett, who were 17 and 15 respectively at the time of their sister’s death, were the next two calls made.“I knew in my heart, I knew in the back of my mind that this is it. Something’s happened,” Bennett said of the moment she got the phone call.The case was unsolved for decadesBlandford and Bennett recount the heartache their family went through after their sister’s death. For years, their parents would chase any lead they could find, bringing it to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office to investigate, but to no avail, they said.“I carried my mother so many times down to the sheriff’s office. I watched everything that she went through, and I had to be the stronger one because … I had to be there for her while my dad continued to work,” Blandford said. “And I watched every disappointment, I watched every ounce of hope.”In 2019, their mother, Catherine Taylor, died not knowing what happened the night her daughter Melissa was killed.A year earlier, a friend of Bennett’s submitted Melissa Ellison’s case to Project: Cold Case, a nonprofit that provides support to families of unsolved homicide victims. The organization created a site for her story with all the information the family had gathered over the years.In January 2026, six months before Glowacz confessed to the killing, Project: Cold Case and Ellison’s family were part of a news conference with First Coast Crime Stoppers.“Someone knows exactly what happened that night. Someone remembers a detail that has never been spoken,” Casie Ellison said at the January news conference. “Someone has lived with this knowledge for nearly four decades. And someone listening to this right now knows that this is about them.”The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office credited the January news conference for aiding in the investigation, adding that some information that came forward played a role in the recent arrest, it said in July.“While his arrest cannot fill the enormous void left in the hearts of Melissa Ellison’s loved ones, I hope that this arrest is another step in the healing process,” Sheriff T.K. Waters said in July.Remembering MissyAfter nearly 40 years of no answers, this arrest might seem like it would be a weight lifted off the family’s shoulders, but Blandford, Bennett and Casie Ellison say they don’t feel relief yet.Both Blandford and Bennett said there isn’t a day that goes by when they don’t think of their sister. When Blandford moved to the beach five years ago, she thought of Missy, who loved the beach. She’s memorialized in the purple “Reign” Jeep Wrangler Bennett purchased because of Missy’s favorite song, “Purple Rain” by Prince. She lives on through Casie Ellison, who has three children of her own now.The journey toward healing continues for the family, as they try to navigate the new feelings that come with the recent developments. For Casie Ellison, this case has been her whole life.“There was no ‘before the incident’ for me,” Casie Ellison said.For the family, the loss has extended beyond losing Missy. The family lost three other relatives after her death.“I don’t know if justice would ever be officially served,” Casie Ellison said. “There’s been so much loss just from the grief and the no answers of this being such a long process. I think maybe had it been sooner, especially when my grandma was alive, and she would have been able to see there be some type of wrap to this in her lifetime, it might be a different answer.”Before finding out about Glowacz’s arrest, the family was planning a remembrance party for Missy with all her loved ones. Blandford says the party is still planned, but with a renewed prayer.“We’re still praying for justice,” Blandford said. “(We) pray and beg that God sheds serious light on this case and gives guidance to the hands of all the detectives … and that this case gets its proper justice, because right now, we’re sitting on an arrest, not justice.”The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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