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Parrot Beats Humans In Investment Contest

Norsefire writes "A Parrot named Strawberry performed better than many humans in an investment competition. The human competitors were able to select any stock they wanted while the Parrot randomly selected the stocks with its beak. Strawberry had a 13.7% return, the human average was a 4.6% loss. Only two humans outperformed Strawberry."

3 comments

  1. How did the average Jimmy Buffet fan do? by istartedi · · Score: 1

    This could be the next big thing.

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    For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
  2. Smart Bird by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Or stupid humans...
    Actually I have no problem believing that humans could do worse then random. This is because there conscious decision to purchase stock is based on press releases and marketing and stock tips. I'd suspect the real investors know the good stock to pick and do so in bulk. The average investors would get slanted to the worse then average picks. This is because making a lot of noise to push up there values doesn't add real value. If there is any real value it's more likely to be absorbed prematurely by the excess inflated demand for that stock in anticipation of some "event" that would have increased it's value. This I think is what makes the more talked about stocks and popular stocks a worse choice then a random picks.

    I learned early on, you don't want to fish in the middle of a crowd, unless they all pulling up tons of fish.

  3. The pic is a greenwing macaw, not a scarlet :) by Wyvern2005 · · Score: 1

    But if she's getting a 13% return she can be anything she wants. Strawberry wanna a nut in exchange for stock forecasts?

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    Oops..was I supposed to push that button?