RE: You can also make a good living on the hysteria of investors (including institutional investors).
When the collective market panics, I buy. When the market gets really too overbought...I sell.
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Can we program these factors into a machine to make the right decision to buy or sell?
To remove the emotion from investing and rely on purely empirical conclusions.
That's basically what I do (I have finance/math majors undergrad and grad...and spent my career in the finance industry).
The algorithms are more fundamental at the beginning and are improved with experience (keeping what works and ejecting what doesn't work).
It's just an iterative process...but so is life if one is sane.
That said, the market will always be a beast with its own mind.
It goes where it goes.
If you can come to read the beast--to know its mind on some level--you can make money on it.
But being humans, we have to recognize our human frailties and not act out of emotion (which includes our hopes and fears).
And that's a tall order.
I let MANY good opportunities pass by. But at 68, I am still learning--still a beginner.
Anyone can do it.
But keep it simple and do what works and discard what doesn't.
And if you need money desperately, get a job.
Desperation has no place in war or investing.
Investing takes a very clear head.
In that way, it's kind of therapeutic.
yes, you can program that contrariness in