Hey, I invented the stock market!
Posted on 09/18/2005 7:58:04 PM PDT by Crackingham
City brokers have never enjoyed the best of reputations. The popular image is of a brash and boastful twentysomething with more money than sense or sensitivity. But now a study by a group of eminent American academics suggests that star performers on the stock market may be even worse and could best be described as “functioning psychopaths”.
In a study of investors’ behaviour, the team from three US universities suggest that people with brain damage can make better financial decisions than the rest of us. Market traders may feel slighted, but this study comes from the growing field of neuroeconomics, which investigates the mental processes that drive financial decision-making. The experts found that emotions can make investors play it too safe. They claim the emotionally impaired are more willing to gamble for high stakes.
The US team found that people with certain brain injuries which suppress their emotions could make the best stock market traders. They took a selection of 41 people of normal IQ, 15 of whom had suffered lesions on the areas of the brain that affect emotions, and made them play a simple investment game. Those with brain damage significantly outperformed those without, the researchers from Stanford Graduate School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Iowa found. The key was the fear that stopped those with “normal” brains from taking even the most sensible of risks.
Antoine Bechara, an associate Professor of Neurology at Iowa, suggested that successful investors in the stock market might plausibly be called “functional psychopaths”.
These are individuals either much better at controlling their emotions or, perhaps, not experiencing them with the same intensity as others.
Baba Shiv, of Stanford, added chillingly: “Many CEOs (chief executive officers) and many top lawyers might also share this trait.
“Being less emotional can help you in certain situations.”
I am way to complicated to be studied ;-)
Wow!
well that explains why im doing good...
hopefully with future earnings i can afford a really good
shrink
then again maybe i dont one
BTTT
Counting the number of replies till someone mentions George Soros . . .
Linking psychopathy with business seems to be an academic trend lately. There's some US corporate law professor who claims that corporations themselves behave in what would be called psychopathic were such behaviors seen in a lone person.
Hey, I invented the stock market!
Of course, why didn't I think of that. Real investing is making "high stakes gambles." What utter crock.
It has also been proven, mathetmatically, that investing in index funds is better than trying to play around in the market. Stock brokers and fund managers, besides those that use 'market tricks' (complex computer programs that exploit very small differences by using large funds), are generally all marketing a useless product... :)
Interesting about emotions, ties in with Ayn Rand objectivism and also a good deal of Eastern (meditative) thought.
Perhaps not, but you do need a functioning 'shift' key....
Wasn't it Gordon Geko who said,"Greed is good"?He was kind of a cold character.
The movie was Wall Street.
Would Ted Kennedy fit the bill?
im confused
Sod off swampy!
Well, for a title you could try "Alligator General", if the business is along the SE coast.
Those corporations aren't really evil, just insane, and are a danger not only to themselves, but to others as well. They should be taken into government custody for everyone's safety.
They don't fool me.
You'd have to be crazy to take this job.
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