Recently I visited a wholesale nursery where the planting operations had been taken over by robots. It saves time, money and helps with scarce labour resources. In my industry, robo-solutions are becoming more popular too. You may have seen ads for providers of low-cost, automated investment advice called “robo-advisors.” They are main stream in the US and on their way to Australia. Answer a few questions online, plug in your login information, and boom! You have an investment allocation according to your age and risk tolerance.
For some investors, this is perfectly appropriate. Their situation may be fairly simple and they don’t need (or want to pay for) more complex or ongoing advice. The solution is OK for a small single-account portfolio. But not all financial decisions can be made with if-then statements or rules that a computer program can follow.