Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said in 1987 that he’d “learned to mumble with great incoherence.”. Machines are now analyzing these dense policy statements in seconds—and getting the sentiment right.
But robots aren’t that smart yet, according to Dirk Schumacher, a Frankfurt-based economist at French lender Natixis SA, which this month started publishing an automated sentiment index of European Central Bank meeting statements. “The question is how intelligent it can become,” he said. “Maybe in a few years time we’ll have algorithms which get everything right, but at this stage I find it a nice crosscheck to verify one’s own assessments.”