Mar 2017
…we would suggest that investors stop thinking of robo-advisers as computers that have “solved” investing and start thinking of them as the manifestations of their human programmers. Simply put, robotic advisers/investors are no better or worse than their programmers, and there are meaningful differences among programmers. Importantly, while human advisers are more capable of adapting to new situations (perhaps like a Trump presidency), robo-advisers must rely more on prior programming, which is necessarily a simplification of thorough human analysis.