Here is an interesting article:
New Study, Old News: Stock Traders Are Psychopaths
http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisbarth/2011/09/26/new-study-old-news-stock-traders-are-psychopaths/
The hubbub is just starting to pick up after NZZ Onlineâs report yesterday on a University of St. Gallen study that shows stock market traders display similarities to certified psychopaths. The study, authored by MBA students Pascal Scherrer and Thomas Noll, compares decisions made by 27 equity, derivative and forex traders in a computer simulation against an existing study of 24 psychopaths in high-security hospitals in Germany. Not only do the traders match their counterparts, but, as Der Speigel succinctly puts it, the âstockbrokersâ behavior is more reckless and manipulative than that of psychopaths.â
The traders, according to Noll, were fixated on gaining more than their competitors in the computer simulation â to the extent that they âspent a lot of energy trying to damage their opponents.â He compared the behavior to bashing a neighborâs fancy car with a baseball bat in order to make your own car the nicest in the neighborhood.
Weâve always known that traders â who thrive in a high stress, high adrenaline environment â are a little bit crazy; Noll and Scherrerâs findings just go further to illustrate that fact.
According to a Vanderbilt University study in 2010, many psychopaths âappear to have such a strong draw to reward â to the carrot â that it overwhelms the sense of risk or concern about the stick.â A volatile market provides more opportunity for day traders than for long term investors, and many of the former are licking their chops.
Today, Alessio Rastani, a stock market and forex trader in Europe, admitted as much to the BBC (full video below), in a brutally honest â and chilling â interview: âIâm a trader. I donât care about [investors' happiness and confidence]. If I see an opportunity to make money, I go with that. For most traders, we donât really care how theyâre going to fix the economy. Our job is to make money from it. Personally, Iâve been dreaming of this moment for three years. I have a confession, which is I go to bed every night and I dream of another recession. I dream of another moment like this.â
If it sounds crazy â and crazy enough to be true â that just may be because it is.