12:26pm UK, Friday August 07, 2009
A five-year-old female parrot called Strawberry has proved to be smarter than human investors in a stock investment contest.
The parrot from Papua New Guinea finished third in the six-week challenge, said Paxnet, an online stock market information provider.
Ddalgi (Korean for Strawberry) competed with 10 stock investors in South Korea. Each started with 60 million won (£29,000) in cyber money and traded 10 million won (£4,860) worth of stocks in each transaction.
Human investors picked any stocks they wanted but 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%," Paxnet general manager Chung Yeon-Dae said. Human investors averaged a 4.6% loss, with only two outperforming the parrot - one by 64.4% and one by 21.4%.
The human investors mostly chose to trade shares of small and medium-sized firms. They 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," Chung said.
The next time your parrot talks, take notes and call your broker.
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