ECON 455Artificial Intelligence Agents in Finance
Economics · 1 to 4 units · Graduate professional courses (400-499)
Limited to Master of Quantitative Economics students. Study bridges quantitative trading and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities by equipping students with skills to design and implement agentic AI systems for financial markets. While conventional approaches rely on humans to interpret news, analyze information, and adjust strategies, study demonstrates how large language model (LLM)-based agents can automate these cognitive tasks while maintaining the rigorous backtesting and execution standards of quantitative finance. Students build physical systems that demonstrate how artificial intelligence can augment—not replace—human decision-making in trading. Emphasis on hands-on implementation, culminating in each student creating their own agent-based trading system that processes real alternative data and executes strategies using reinforcement learning frameworks.
Letter grading.
When it runs
- Winter 2026
- Winter 2027
Scheduled, not typical — from UCLA’s Schedule of Classes, which publishes Fall 2025 through Spring 2027 and nothing before it.
Requisites
UCLA lists no requisites for this course.
Requires
Everything that has to come before this course, not just the courses named in the requisite above.
Nothing — this is an entry point.
Unlocks
What this course is a requisite for, and what those courses lead to in turn.
No course in the catalog lists this as a requisite.