Despite being one of the most computationally intensive fields, financial services is full of heuristics. The application of advanced AI techniques is tenuous at best; many firms simply don't engage in strategies that allow for easy adoption of AI. Talent wars for top quantitative talent with Silicon Valley has also made the problem worse. You may be saying to yourself don't I need to have a finance background to work with this data? It's worth noting that two of the world's top hedge funds were founded by teams that participated in the famous Netflix Machine Learning challenge. While there is incredible benefit in studying the techniques of algorithmic trading, you can get started with your knowledge of ANNs and how to handle financial data appropriately with them.
Now, let's start setting up the landscape. In financial services...