Traders Amnesia

Traders are often afflicted by many psychological maladies, foremost amongst them is their remarkably short memories. This is particularity true on the sell side of the industry where those flogging various products seem to have the attention span that is worse than a goldfish. Allied to this is the basic thickness  some people have when it comes…

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Bayes and Deadweight

The quality of your life will, to a large extent, be decided by whom you elect to spend your time with. Supportive, caring, and funny are great attributes in friends and lovers. Unceasingly negative cynics who chip away at your self-esteem? We need to jettison those people as far and fast as we can. The problem is, how do we…

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Do Alpha Males Deliver Alpha?

Apparently not… Abstract Using facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) as a proxy for testosterone, we show that high-testosterone hedge fund managers significantly underperform low-testosterone hedge fund managers after adjusting for risk. Moreover, high-testosterone managers are more likely to terminate their funds, disclose violations on their Form ADVs, and display greater operational risk. We trace the underperformance…

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