We are pleased to look back on a highly successful 59th After-Work Lecture, organized in cooperation with the CFA Society Liechtenstein. The event brought together around 60 participants – investment professionals, academics, and students – for an inspiring evening on the topic «Asset Allocation and AI».

Sebastian Stöckl, Associate Professor for Financial Economics at the University of Liechtenstein, delivered an engaging and thought-provoking presentation that bridged cutting-edge academic research and real-world investment practice.

In his talk, Professor Stöckl demonstrated how artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping modern asset management - from processing unstructured data such as financial news or images with large language models (LLMs) and convolutional neural networks, to predicting returns and risks across asset classes, and even learning optimal portfolio weights directly through advanced machine learning approaches.

Building on leading international research by Bryan Kelly, Dacheng Xiu, and Turan G. Bali, he also highlighted the important contributions emerging from the University of Liechtenstein. Together with his colleagues - Professor of Practice Gianluca De Nard and Postdoctoral Researchers Merlin Bartel and Tomasz Dubiel-Teleszynski - his team develops innovative AI-driven approaches to asset pricing, forecasting, and portfolio construction. Their work shows how artificial intelligence can improve factor modeling, enhance diversification, and uncover investment opportunities that remain hidden to traditional methods.

A highlight of the evening was the discussion of the «Virtue of Complexity». This concept challenges long-standing econometric intuition and is actively explored in joint research projects between the University of Liechtenstein and the Finanzplatz Liechtenstein, underscoring the strong collaboration between academia and industry.

The presentation concluded with a lively Q&A session, followed by a networking apéro where conversations continued around AI’s future role in investment management and education.

We would like to thank all participants for their active engagement and our partner, the CFA Society Liechtenstein, for their excellent collaboration. A special thank you goes to Sebastian Stöckl for his valuable insights.