Can you program a machine to be contrarian? And if you could,...

Can you program a machine to be contrarian? And if you could, and we all moved to machine-based investing, then we would eventually have to program the machines to be anti-contrarians.

At the end of the day, humans would have to be for ever tweaking the machines so that they don't get caught up in the herd, otherwise all those machines will end up looking like index investors.

Unless we can generate machines that do the tweaking.... But then the tweakers are going to have to be independent and contrarian... aargh!

I remember the lead up to the dot com bubble. I remember how certain everyone was that this time really was different. The old ways were no longer relevant.

I remember in the lead up to the GFC. Different this time again. Value investing was dead. New valuation paradigm were in order.

I remember the post GFC bust. Different again. This time all equities were dead, it was proclaimed. The death of equities was the new paradigm. Never again would the sharemarket deliver any riches.

I remember the more recent death of active investing. The new paradigm was Index Investing. Auto pilot mode would deliver everyone riches. Never mind that 90% of investors act pro cyclically and so never even achieve what the index might deliver.

Now AI and machines are the new paradigm. No more need for humans.

Ultimately, whether it's machines or indices, as long as the end customer is a human, then there will be human intervention of one form or another, with all its flaws, foibles and biases.