Hi--

The question that I really want to ponder is this: Does the capacity of the Robot to analyze money flows and technical patterns render our own homework obsolete?

Unlike Darvas who developed his theory (at least as he tells it) from scratch, the Robots promise to relieve us of this burden. Instead of going over data to determine boxes, or bases, or even pocket pivots, I can allow a machine to make more precise and even safer calls for me. Moreover, I can give my attention to other pursuits rather than challenge myself to become an excellent speculator.

I am always struck that Darvas' final obstacle was the noise of the market. But not only can we learn from Darvas to turn down market noise, but we can hand over all analytic duties to the machine. We only need read its commands and input them into our trading platforms.

As a former tournament chess player, this is akin to me being allowed to use a device to play entire games for me. As a player I may know that the computer will not always play the absolute best moves and sometimes, as an experienced player, I may even know that its move or moves are not the best at all; but I know, too, that if I allow the machine to play for me I will probably win the tournament; moreover, any discretionary intervention only lowers the over all odds of victory. Now let's say other players are employing their computers (as is the case in the markets), I know my machine is making strong choices and will probably not lose many games, though it might draw many against other computers. As a player I may be able to play anti-computer systems and do about as well as my computer only when I'm in my best emotional and physical condition. But a computer program, so long as it is regularly updated and run on a strong computer, never has a bad day; and it never succumbs to noise. What would any rational person do? So long as results are paramount (and in the stock market what else matters?), the only rational choice is to trust the machine. I have come to a similar conclusion regarding the robots.

Darvas teaches that learning to invest is a process full of traps and errors and that one can overcome via the use of intelligence to discern the accumulations of instituional buyers in the boxes and bases of high flying stocks. But-- again-- the Robots provide artificial intelligence which renders the virtue and skill of stock selection, purchase and selling quaintly obsolete.

As for the honesty of my post: I think my struggles are typical. At this point, I'm taking Darvis seriously enough to realize that technical analysis, done rigorously, does not require that I pay attention to the noise of the media or even my trading platform, which informs me of every penny change in all the stocks I monitor. The real "honest" humanistic problem is posed to us by the Robots themselves.