Parrot beats investors in South Korean stock market contest

Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | August 7, 2009

[Schnucki]

A five-year-old parrot in South Korea has proved smarter than human investors in a stock investment contest.

Ddalgi (Korean for strawberry), from Papua New Guinea, finished third in the six-week contest which ended on Wednesday, said Paxnet, an online stock market information provider.

The bird competed with 10 stock investors. Each started with 60 million won (£29,000) 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 per cent," Chung Yeon-Dae, the Paxnet general manager, told AFP.

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

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," Mr Chung said.

[taxtruth]

I guess GS uses parrots then.

[FatherofFive]

Index funds are generally best for most people. Low fees, and they beat 80% of the pros.

[ClearCase_guy]

I really wouldn't want to go too far in mocking the human performance, but I will say this --

In the US, when a lot of the really big financial houses collapsed, despite the hard work of many brilliant, brilliant people, and the remaining big financial houses were teetering on the brink of collapse ...

There seemed to be an attitude that $100M bonuses made a lot of sense, because without those brilliant, brilliant people things would be even worse.

Excuse me? How much worse could they be? Maybe we WOULD be better turning the operation over to parrots.

[supremedoctrine]

I AM PLEASED
I am apparently the first to propose the idea for
a new South Korean Game Show to be called
“Are you Smarter than a Five Year Old Parrot?”.
S. Korea’s version of Jeff Foxworthy, Steve Kim,
will host.

[dfwgator]

Lovely plumage!

[Above My Pay Grade]

Looks like a Quaker Parrot (also known as a Monk Parakeet). They are known as intelligent, outgoing, feisty little parrots, and generally make very good pets.

They are probably the hardiest of all parrot species. Escaped pets have formed feral flocks as far north as Massachusetts and Oregon. Unlike most parrots, they build elaborate nests, which allow them to survive cold winters.