Dowbrigade

Brain-Damaged Psychopaths Make Best Financial
Traders

LONDON (Reuters) – "Wanted:
psychopaths to make a killing in the markets."

Such an advert will not be appearing in the world’s newspapers any time
soon, but it may have a ring of truth after research revealed the best
wheeler-dealers could well be "functional psychopaths."

A team of U.S. scientists has found the emotionally impaired are more willing
to gamble for high stakes and that people with brain damage may make good
financial decisions, the Times newspaper reported Monday.

In a study of investors’ behavior 41 people with normal IQs were asked
to play a simple investment game. Fifteen of the group had suffered lesions
on the areas of the brain that affect emotions.

The result was those with brain damage outperformed those without.

The scientists found emotions led some of the group to avoid risks even
when the potential benefits far outweighed the losses, a phenomenon known
as myopic loss aversion.

One of the researchers, Antione Bechara, an associate professor of neurology
at the University of Iowa, said the best stock market investors might plausibly
be called "functional psychopaths."

from Reuters

So now it’s Hurricane
Rita, bearing
down on the Florida Keys and thence on into the super-heated waters of
the Gulf of Mexico to test out the dire theory that changing weather
patterns and warmer waters have converted the Gulf into a breeding ground
for killer storms.

Spooked by Katrina, oil
prices shot up a record four
dollars a barrel today, in anticipation of something that might or could
happen a week on down the line, as players bet on disaster again.

The stock market has always been the
biggest de-facto casino in the country, with the US Government as the
house, taking a cut from all of the winners, and most of the losers as
well. It offers multiple games, with varying degrees of risk, and much less security than Harrods or the Golden Palace.

Although they like to think they are in control, the
players on the stock, bonds, futures, financials and currency markets
are stone cold gambling junkies, just as bad as twitchy County Treasurer
from Crystal Springs, Iowa in his ratty, wrinkled seersucker jacket,
who hasn’t slept in 62 hours and has just burned through the county budget
for the
next
fiscal year.

The commodities and futures traders who are running up the price of oil are among the worst. Like vulturous Cassandras, they prophesy
doom and then circle at a safe distance to feast on the pickings. They love this kind of thing
– wars and disasters and rumors of wars and disasters. These are the
times when killings can be made. (note:“Wanted: psychopaths to make a killing in the markets.”)

They are also dangerous times.  It is a also lot
easier to get oneself killed amid disaster and destruction.  We
will never know how many scores were settled, once and for all, in the
terrible darkness after Katrina came and left.

Meanwhile, back to Rita: what happened to killer storms
with names like Andrew, Bob and Camille, names decently near the beginning
of the alphabet? The quasi-governmental National Hurricane Center is
telling us there will NOT be more hurricanes, but rather more intense
hurricanes.  However, we can’t ever remember being quite so far
down the alphabet quite so early in the season..

What are they going to do after they get to Hurricane
Zelda – next week? They can continue on with Aa – Aaron, of course.  But
after that? Bbubba? Or throw in Ñ and Ll in honor of our 60 million
Spanish speakers? Inquiring minds need to know…

from Newsday