The credit crunch - yet another thing to blame on testosterone
Stock brokers make lots of money because they're men.
Stock brokers also lose lots of money because they're men.
This is the distilled version of a story doing the rounds today on the BBC website and elsewhere, Hormones 'may fuel market crises', about a study which has found a link between levels of testosterone and profit-making in investment bankers.
This isn't perhaps a surprise. The author of the study only included male stock brokers, the reason being that there just weren't enough women on the trading floor to do a proper statistical analysis of their hormone levels. Even today it's still a male-dominated career, perhaps because only males have the mentality required to risk other people's money and net the rewards. Or, more importantly in the current climate, take the losses.
Which makes me wonder how many post-transition F2M transsexual stockbrokers there have been, and whether they "lost their edge" when deprived of the angry-juice.
And would a more gender-balanced stock market necessarily be any better? Would we not now be facing a credit crunch brought about by alpha-males taking one risk too far? And would a female-dominated financial system even work? The stock markets thrive and grow on risk that is more or less of their own creation. Would it stagnate, coddled to death by play-it-safe girly types?
Stock brokers also lose lots of money because they're men.
This is the distilled version of a story doing the rounds today on the BBC website and elsewhere, Hormones 'may fuel market crises', about a study which has found a link between levels of testosterone and profit-making in investment bankers.
This isn't perhaps a surprise. The author of the study only included male stock brokers, the reason being that there just weren't enough women on the trading floor to do a proper statistical analysis of their hormone levels. Even today it's still a male-dominated career, perhaps because only males have the mentality required to risk other people's money and net the rewards. Or, more importantly in the current climate, take the losses.
Which makes me wonder how many post-transition F2M transsexual stockbrokers there have been, and whether they "lost their edge" when deprived of the angry-juice.
And would a more gender-balanced stock market necessarily be any better? Would we not now be facing a credit crunch brought about by alpha-males taking one risk too far? And would a female-dominated financial system even work? The stock markets thrive and grow on risk that is more or less of their own creation. Would it stagnate, coddled to death by play-it-safe girly types?
As with most industries, it is those that get lucky and know the right people that get rewarded, along with those that can cover their arse and blame the unwitting.
:LOL:
There's so much automation now that boom and bust is almost wired into the system. Certainly when a research tried running a virtual stockmarket, the system operated pretty much like the real one. Makes you wonder if we really need the chest-beating coke*-guzzling alphas.
( * I do of course refer to the trade-marked beverage ;-) )
Some of the most aggressive traders I've known have been women, I can't believe they couldn't find enough to include in the survey! Sometimes you can't move for them trying to charm a higher credit limit out of the Risk team.
The report is balderdash. There's equality on the floor - money doesn't care what you are. Heck, money, real money, values individualism more than conformity. They make more money, or lose it with equal enthusiasm.
Losing a million dollars in one phone call is a surefire way of demonstrating equality. That doesn't have anything to do with testosterone.
Carolyn Ann
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