I was tickled pink when this link turned up on my twitter feed (excerpt):
...One project is Michael Marcovici’s Rat Trader. The book describes the training of laboratory rats to trade in foreign exchange and commodity futures markets. Marcovici says the rats “outperformed some of the world’s leading human fund managers.” The rats were trained to press a red or green button to give buy or sell signals, after listening to ticker tape movements represented as sounds. If they called the market right they were fed, if they called it wrong they got a small electric shock. Male and female rats performed equally well. The second generation of rattraders, cross-bred from the best performers in the first generation, appeared to have even better performance, although this is a preliminary result, according to the text. Marcovici’s plan, he writes, is to breed enough of them to set up a hedge fund...
No, this isn’t an April Fool’s joke. Because believe it or not, here’s what I came across a day later:
Holy shit, the rat traders NAILED the bottom of the market. Went long banks in March, 2009. http://t.co/eRdnlvFIKQ pic.twitter.com/oFjxTPELlb
— Joseph Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) September 23, 2014 The website is here, and the training methods are detailed here. Check out the record of Mr Kleinworth Morgan Jr 5. Brings a whole new meaning to the term “alternative investment”.
I might just recommend this to our investment committee. They could even take me seriously, if they don’t die of laughter first.
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Perhaps the investment & portfolio management lads & lasses at Khazanah and 1MDB should be taking notes....
ReplyDeleteBut the humble "tikus" won't cut it. Kinda lowbrow for these investment blueblood types.
Anyway, hedge funds have been known to adopt all sorts of techniques and formulae to predict or outsmart the "market".
I almost wrote " to game the market", but caught myself in time!
I have always believe that this was what it is all.
ReplyDeletePink is an understatement, blue more like it.
Zuo De