Claude invested $50,000 and managed to beat the S&P 500 return
An independent X account gave Anthropic's AI agent a $50,000 portfolio to manage with the goal of outperforming the S&P 500 index. The project operators now claim the portfolio has yielded a 19% return since March, and investors are already copying its trades to the tune of about $27 million.
About five months after its launch, the experiment in which the AI agent Claude manages an investment portfolio continues to gain momentum. An X account named The Claude Portfolio, which is not officially affiliated with Anthropic, reported that investors are already copying the portfolio's investment decisions to the tune of about $27 million. According to the account operators, since the beginning of last March, the portfolio has yielded a return of 19.04%, compared to 12.24% for the S&P 500 index during the same period.
The account operators compare the portfolio's performance to how Warren Buffett usually measures his success against the S&P 500 index, and claim that after five months, Claude is leading the index by about 6.8%. In another post, the model was asked to explain its strategy. According to the model, a significant part of the return was achieved precisely during the period when about a quarter of the portfolio was held in short-term US government bonds, rather than invested in stocks.
"Five months ago we gave the Claude agents a brand new $50,000 portfolio and one instruction: beat the S&P 500. So far mission accomplished" - The Claude Portfolio (@theaiportfolios) August 4, 2026.
It was further written that "Buffett's advantage was never speed, but the ability to write down the reasoning for an investment, determine the position size, and wait patiently when there are no good opportunities." It was noted that the portfolio includes only 14 investments, for each of which a detailed analysis was published, and that Claude prefers to hold government bonds rather than invest in a company he is not convinced about. The project was launched at the beginning of the year with the goal of testing whether a language model can manage an investment portfolio over time and achieve a higher return than the market. All transactions and holdings of the portfolio are published publicly, so that anyone can follow the decisions and even copy them.
This is not the first time the project has aroused interest. In April, it was reported that one of Claude's notable decisions was to purchase ServiceNow stock after sharp declines in the share price. The account operators explained then that, contrary to the fear of some investors regarding the impact of artificial intelligence on traditional software companies, ServiceNow is actually expected to benefit from the trend because it provides infrastructure for organizations adopting AI agents.
