Parrot is victorious in Stock contest

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A five-year-old female parrot named Strawberry has proved smarter than human investors in a stock investment contest, organisers said on Friday.

The parrot from Papua New Guinea finished third in the six-week contest which ended on Wednesday, said Paxnet, an online stock market information provider.

Ddalgi (strawberry) competed with 10 stock investors. Each started with 60 million won (48,380 dollars) in cyber money and traded 10 million won worth of stocks in each transaction.

Human investors picked any stocks they wanted. The parrot, using its beak, made random choices from balls representing 30 blue chips including Samsung Electronics.

"The outcome of our contest was amazing. Ddalgi stood third with her investment return standing at 13.7 percent," Paxnet general manager Chung Yeon-Dae told AFP.

Human investors averaged a 4.6 percent loss, with only two outperforming the parrot -- one by 64.4 percent and one by 21.4 percent.

The human investors, who mostly chose to trade shares of small and medium-sized firms, each made an average of 190 trades over the six weeks. Organisers gave the parrot seven chances to pick shares over the same period.

"Our experiment proved that making long-term investments in blue chips is safe and effective," Chung said.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20090807/tod-parrot-beats-punters-in-skorean-stoc-7f81b96.html

Onikage

Greater fool than a parrot? That's got to hurt...

ixus

Some would say that's down to random walk; I'd put it down to cognitive decision making (anchoring etc).

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I assumed it was just coincidental that it happened to do so well, but maybe there is a random aspect to markets that people overlook, or choose to ignore in favor of learned decision making

I'd be sold on that idea if it was to do so well again