Here’s how excessively the results exceeded those expectations. Der Spiegel: “Noll said the stockbrokers behaved as though their neighbor had the same car, ‘and they took after it with a baseball bat so they could look better themselves.'” Instead of a businesslike approach to tasks, “it was most important to the traders to get more” than the imprisoned psychopaths, and “they spent a lot of energy trying to damage their opponents.” Ho hum. Who knew?
The second place felonious Swiss immediately demanded a rematch, as I learned from a former Lehman Bros. auditor who had coached them. The triumphant brokers and traders accepted the challenge with equal quickness. The Lehman coach wrote, “I’d coached the Swiss team for the trustiworthiness competition, which, by the way, we won handily. Anyway, in other events, my felons felt they could do better overall with a little more seasoning in recklessness and disdain for others.” So, he wrote, “after haggling over issues germane to arranging rematches between psychopathic contestants,” a November 15th, 2011 game date was agreed upon, ex parte, after the New York City traders’ walked out.” He closed by inviting me to the November contest, and included a prospectus for a fund he now operates through a U.S. P.O. box, The Pöschwies Parole Fund.
I’m doing due diligence on the fund. As for attending the November 15th rematch, I have a decidedly mandatory court date that day. Dissapointed? Of course. I love a rematch! So, instead, my participation will be in a way I’m comfortable with: unaffordable and irresponsible wagering. Unfortunately – for me, not for my bookie – I adopt underdogs. In the betting game, that’s called a dog player, which is bookmaker lingo for “idiot.” Always all-in for inept or clearly outclassed competitors, I bet boldly, and, to be candid, quite clownishly. This passion for betting the underdog, combined with my utter inability to learn from the past, has led to long periods of weak financial recovery, repetitive divorce, repossession of items as small as my key chain, and, overall, severe philosophical challenges to my sense of child-like innocence. Summing up, where’s my bookie?
This time, though, after speaking with my parish priest (from whom I hoped to one day get back my key chain), we decided that continual financial immolation was no way to prepare for my future. Consequently, getting sucked into another habitual kindhearted knee-jerk sympathetic wager by a bunch of felonious psychopathic German jailbirds was a non-starter. “Do this,” my spirtual advisor said, “and I swear to God you’ll go straight to Hell, and without so much as a key chain!”
So, enough already. Despite their beloved underdog status, some research seemed in order before I put my few remaining dollars on Swiss psychopaths, particularly when they’re coached by a former Lehman Bros. executive. How to accomplish this, though? There are problems. Being a “credit bettor,” i.e all cash I have not managed to secret away travels directly from my wallet to a preposterously imposing man named Cha Cha, my bookmaker. He’s in this for profit, and insists on at least getting his “vig” which he tells me is something like a small fee for a layaway plan on my life. So, you see, my credit is in the dumps. And November 15th is just short of looming. A trip to the Old World to scout underdog Swiss felons was out of the question. Ask Cha Cha.
What was left then? As a denizen of this city that never sleeps, it was obvious: without anything more than shoe leather I’d measure the psychopathic talent of New York City securities traffickers. The NYC contingent, it is reliably rumored, compiled a near perfect record in the egotism, recklessness, and downright orneryness titles at the initial match-up. And Wall Streeters, insiders say, even outrecklessed a coven of traderrific UBS Delta One Deskers with home field advantage a stones throw from Zürich. Incarcerated German arsonists, cat burglars, and identity thiefs never saw it coming, although there were a few felonious UBSers among them to make a game of it.
An itinerant trader loitering outside what he believed was JP Morgan (it was the Flatiron building), asserted that a few “bond trading rookies at any firm in town” could out-reckless a band of “simple, everyday deranged and undercapitalized German arsonists.” In fact, he continued, “on a single day, traders routinely take risks that would cause incontinence in a Hollywood stuntman.” Her reminded
Of course, social science studies are notoriously unreliable and one must examine them with a jewelers eye for various spoilers like inadequate sample size, poor testing methods, odd statistical aberrations to name but a few. In this case, however, the results are a bit like a sociological study proving the sun rises in the east, so let’s just dispense with standard validation and reliability methods. a dandy study and utterly reliable
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| Yes, yes!!! I am a serial trader! |
09/26/2011 05:16 PM
Going Rogue
Share Traders More Reckless Than Psychopaths, Study Shows, Study Shows
What makes individual stockbrokers blow billions in financial markets with criminal trading schemes? According to a new study conducted at a Swiss university, it may be because share traders behave more recklessly and are more manipulative than psychopaths.
Two weeks ago, yet another case of rogue trading shocked the financial world when UBS trader Kweku Adoboli was arrested for allegedly squandering some $2.3 billion with a risky and unauthorized investment scheme. The 31-year-old, who had been based in London for the Swiss bank, remains in jail. The bank’s chief executive Oswald Grübel, meanwhile, has resigned over the scandal — the third major embarrassment to rattle the institution in just a few years.
The situation mirrors a similar scandal at French bank Société Générale, where another young “rogue trader,” Jérôme Kerviel, gambled away billions in 2010. He is still serving a three-year jail sentence. But why do these situations keep arising in the financial world?
According to a new study at the University of St. Gallen seen by SPIEGEL, one contributing factor may be that stockbrokers’ behavior is more reckless and manipulative than that of psychopaths. Researchers at the Swiss research university measured the readiness to cooperate and the egotism of 28 professional traders who took part in computer simulations and intelligence tests. The results, compared with the behavior of psychopaths, exceeded the expectations of the study’s co-authors, forensic expert Pascal Scherrer, and Thomas Noll, a lead administrator at the Pöschwies prison north of Zürich.
Appetite for Destruction
“Naturally one can’t characterize the traders as deranged,” Noll told SPIEGEL. “But for example, they behaved more egotistically and were more willing to take risks than a group of psychopaths who took the same test.”
Particularly shocking for Noll was the fact that the bankers weren’t aiming for higher winnings than their comparison group. Instead they were more interested in achieving a competitive advantage. Instead of taking a sober and businesslike approach to reaching the highest profit, “it was most important to the traders to get more than their opponents,” Noll explained. “And they spent a lot of energy trying to damage their opponents.”
Using a metaphor to describe the behavior, Noll said the stockbrokers behaved as though their neighbor had the same car, “and they took after it with a baseball bat so they could look better themselves.”
The researchers were unable to explain this penchant for destruction, they said.
