ARTIFICIAL LIFE RELEASES NEW SMART-BOT PRODUCT
Artificial Life, Inc., a developer of intelligent software robots (a.k.a. "bots" or "smart-bots") for the Internet, announced the release of its latest product -- ALife-PortfolioManager Version 1.0 -- which will be shipped at the end of November 1999. ALife-PortfolioManager uses ALife-SmartEngine Technology and state of the art financial models to enable the user to manage and optimize personalized investment portfolios, gather and filter portfolio relevant news, maintain individualized investment profiles, and communicate with users in natural language through a customizable, human-like interface.
Personalized software robots represent the next generation of financial services for the individual investor. As the percentage of securities trading done by individual investors via the internet steadily rises, the industry is challenged to meet the needs of a new type of investor. "Private investors are beginning to demand the ability to manage and optimize their portfolios online," said Eberhard Schoneburg, Chairman and CEO of Artificial Life, Inc. "ALife-PortfolioManager is a personalized, easy to use, intelligent portfolio management system that is able to monitor, maintain, and even optimize portfolios 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. ALife technology sets a new standard in online trading." Investors can use ALife-PortfolioManager to construct a set of possible portfolios and visualize in real time the effect of varying the proportions of securities in the portfolio. The system periodically evaluates the optimal performance of a user's portfolio and, based on a purely statistical analysis, automatically indicates possible changes. If a specific part of a user's portfolio has poor returns, the system can indicate an optimal replacement while maintaining the user's predefined risk profile, enabling individual investors to better understand the nature of their investment and the effect of change in the composition of their portfolio.
ALife PortfolioManager provides different optimization models. One or more of these models can be chosen by the user or by a financial institution for its clients. The proportions of assets to minimize risk and maximize returns are automatically computed using the risk model selected by the user. The program automatically balances the user's portfolio when the user changes investment objectives, such as the duration of investment and risk tolerance. ALife-PortfolioManager uses proprietary high speed optimization algorithms that enable users to optimize the performance of portfolios in real time. This enables customers to compare the performance of different securities or a multitude of portfolios. The ALife-PortfolioManager smart bot fully automates the mundane task of searching for portfolio-relevant information on the Internet and indexing this information by searching news sites, chat rooms, and other sources of fund related data such as change in management of a fund and company news. Users of ALife-PortfolioManager can specify a free quote server of their choice or various Web sites from which to download information. The ALife smart bot combines numerical and text analysis to filter and classify this information. A bot, using natural language to communicate, assists the user with the different features of the program and serves as a help system. The bot also provides a tutorial-type description of the basic steps in portfolio optimization. Users can construct a knowledge base to define or modify the behavior of the bot, including appearance, animation, and verbal responses.
ALife-PortfolioManager is a platform-independent Java application. It runs on Windows 95/98/NT 4.0 (or greater) as well as on Unix and Linux platforms with Netscape Navigator or Communicator (v 4.0 or greater) and Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 or greater. A client/server version of the ALife-PortfolioManager for institutional investors is scheduled to be released in Q2 2000. This release will contain additional risk models, sophisticated forecasting algorithms, and will aid the user in investments with other financial instruments.
Detailed information about Artificial Life, Inc. and its products is available at http://www.artificial-life.com.