It’s that time of year when Australia’s best stock pickers swap market charts for form guides and the field for the 2025 Melbourne Cup has drawn more analysis from financiers than a quarterly earnings report.

Switzer Daily has once again assembled a stable of market watchers, fund managers and financial heavyweights to share their Cup tips — and this year, even the quants are getting involved.

Peter Switzer is backing Half Yours, while TenCap’s Jun Bei Liu likes River of Stars. Switzer Group’s Maureen Jordan is taking a spread with More Felons, Buckeroo and Valiant King, and veteran investor Paul Rickard is throwing his support behind Meydaan. Shaw and Partners’ Adam Dawes and Bell Direct’s Grady Wulff are united on Presage Nocturne, with Wulff also adding Al Riffa to her quinella hopes. AMP’s Diana Mousina, ever the economist, said she’s “too busy with the RBA” to call it — a sentiment many market-watchers might share this week. She did message me a few hours later, however to say she "asked ChatGPT", which gave her the favourite: Half Yours.

Finally, we've got a reporter on-ground today in the form of ABC Bullion's Jordan Eliseo. You see, ABC Bullion actually forged the Melbourne Cup trophy. Shiny! Jordan's trackside pick came in this morning as...nothing. "I'm not a great tipper when it comes to horse-racing. I wouldn't want to lead your readers astray with an (at best) highly speculative tip," Jordan confessed. Fair enough.

But perhaps the most unconventional tip sheet of all comes from Macquarie Capital’s team of quants, boffins and bots. In their now-annual Melbourne Cup Quant Style report, the analysts behind the “PunterGPT” experiment used a mix of AI models — including ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok and Claude — alongside their own data-driven model to crunch the field.

Their hybrid approach produced a rare consensus, with both humans and machines agreeing on four frontrunners: Half Yours, Presage Nocturne, Valiant King and Flatten the Curve.

Adding a touch of macro flavour, the Macquarie team even introduced a “tariff handicap” this year — giving international runners like Al Riffa and Flatten the Curve a penalty for being unproven on Australian soil, while rewarding local performers such as Half Yours and Torranzino.

In true quant fashion, the report concludes that they’ll “go for the win on horses identified by both approaches and construct a box trifecta using the top six runners from each model.”

Whether the smart money is with Switzer’s crew or the machines remains to be seen. But if the past few years have taught punters anything, it’s that in both markets and horse racing, past performance is no guarantee of future returns.

It's worth noting though: horse racing is still pretty mean. If you're like me and would prefer that the horses get to walk around and eat grass at Flemington instead, I'd encourage you to donate to the RSPCA instead of chucking on a lazy bet. They're for all creatures great and small, after all.