More than likely.
The interesting thing about this piece is that whilst it is largely directed as the Chinese community and their approach to numerology and its perceived importance in decision making the same sort of irrationality applies universally. You need only pick up a copy of our local trading magazine Your Trading Edge to see that it abounds with irrationality such as Gann, Fibonnaci, and astrology.
Within decision making you have a triad of components, the cognitive capacity of the person making the decision, the quality of the information being received and the time to make the decision. Decision making is therefore bounded since none of these features can be infinite. However, I think there is a flaw in this matrix in that it doesn’t include irrationality which in humans can be unbounded. Simply look around you and you will soon be convinced of the veracity of this. Irrationality is the default state for humans, this is why we had to invent both logic and the scientific method to enable us to actually begin to understand the universe we live in.
Superstition, which is defined as a belief that is not based on reason, has been a part of the human condition since humans began. But does superstition adversely affect human welfare? We answer this question in the context of trading in the Taiwan Futures Exchange, where we exploit the Chinese superstition that the number “8” is lucky and the number “4” is unlucky.
Defining a “superstition index” of a trader as the proportion of limit order submissions at prices ending at “8” minus the proportion of limit order submissions at prices ending at “4,” we find that individual investors are superstitious but institutional investors are not. Further, amongst individual investors, there is a negative correlation between trading profits and the superstition index. We find that these losses arise from bad trades at nearly all price points for a superstitious trader, not just at “8” and “4,” suggesting that superstition may be a symptom of a general cognitive disability in making financial decisions.
