A five-year-old parrot in South Korea has proved smarter than human investors in a stock investment contest.Published: 1:15PM BST 07 Aug 2009
Ddalgi (Korean for strawberry), from Papua New Guinea, finished third in the six-week contest which ended on Wednesday, said Paxnet, an online stock market information provider.
The bird competed with 10 stock investors. Each started with 60 million won (£29,000) in cyber money and traded 10 million won worth of stocks in each transaction.
Human investors picked any stocks they wanted. 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 per cent," Chung Yeon-Dae, the Paxnet general manager, told AFP.
Human investors averaged a 4.6 per cent loss, with only two outperforming the parrot - one by 64.4 per cent and one by 21.4 per cent.
The human investors, who mostly chose to trade shares of small and medium-sized firms, 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," Mr Chung said.
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