I only turn into a psychopath when someone steps on my shoes.
The University in St. Gallen, Switzerland (how appropriate) has come out with a study that compares traders with psychopaths. The surprising result was that not only do traders act like psychos, they’re worse. I’m not surprised at this at all. From NZZ:
The study reviewed the direct comparison of results with an existing study of 24 psychopaths in German high-security hospitals and a control group of 27 "normal" people.The “normal people” that is referred to are 27 traders. Stock guys, FX/commodities traders and derivative types were the “normal' people that were stacked up against the actual crazies in the German nut house.
Even the experts were surprised by the result. They attest to the stock market professionals with a penchant for immense destruction.
The performance of the 27 dealers is even worse than the psychopaths.
"It's like beating one of the neighbor’s expensive cars with a baseball bat with the sole objective of owning the most beautiful car in the neighborhood."
A trader takes advantage of destruction caused by government and central banks, primarily, and sometimes weather and other facts of reality. An analogy might be someone who cooks some hot dogs and marshmallows over the red-hot smoldering ruins of his neighbors home that just got burnt down. That might piss people off and seem rather heartless perhaps, but in fact he did not cause the destruction, and is at least getting some value out of the combustion that otherwise would be wasted.
ReplyDeleteA psychopath/sociopath causes destruction. He is the source of destruction. To eliminate him is to eliminate the destruction (eliminate the government, central banks and non-productive/manipulator corporations and most destruction ends). The trader would be reduced to waiting for lightning strikes to cook his hot dogs, which remains relatively harmless.