PQUS - Can AI Beat the S 500?

PQUS - Can AI Beat the S 500?

Pictet Asset Management

Thu, August 6, 2026 at 8:52 PM GMT+3 1 min read

• ^GSPC +0.62%
• PQUS +0.60%

In this ETF.com interview, Senior ETF Analyst Sumit Roy sits down with David Wright, Head of Quantitative Investments at Pictet Asset Management, to discuss the Pictet AI Enhanced US Equity ETF (PQUS) — a new AI-powered ETF that aims to deliver the best of passive and active investing.

Unlike traditional quantitative strategies built on a handful of factors like momentum, value, and quality, PQUS trains a machine learning model on hundreds of characteristics for every stock in the S&P 500, generating short-term return forecasts across the entire index. The fund then builds a benchmark-aware, risk-managed portfolio designed to capture the thousands of small pricing anomalies that humans — and conventional quant models — can struggle to identify.

Wright also addresses the questions on every investor's mind: how an AI ETF handles index concentration and the Magnificent Seven, how the model adapts to new IPOs entering the index, and why an enhanced index strategy still makes sense when the broad US stock market keeps grinding higher. His case: with elevated valuations and compressed risk premiums pointing to lower expected returns, consistently compounding even modest alpha over the benchmark could matter more than ever.

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