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Very interesting and entertaining article
According to a new breed of researchers from the field of behavioral finance, Wall Street’s volatility is really driven by our body chemistry. It’s the chemicals pulsing through traders’ veins that propel them to place insane bets and enable bank executives to make risky decisions—and those same chemicals tend to have the same effect on everyone, turning them into a herd of overheated animals.
And because the vast majority of these traders and finance executives are men, the most important chemical in question is testosterone.
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Here are a few things we know about testosterone: Both men and women produce it, but men make fifteen times as much of it as women, on average. It causes all sorts of physical differences—in body hair, muscle mass, jawlines, and so on.
Lee is sitting at a trading desk with his friend Harley Evans, a derivatives trader at a firm called Mako Financial Markets, talking about gender differences in their line of work. “They never got ruffled, never got upset,” Lee continues. “Losing their temper? Never.”
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“I think women can be very emotional, too,” Evans says, not entirely convinced.
<!--end paragraph--> <!--begin paragraph-->
“Women respond to stress differently,” Lee says. Rather than throwing the phone across the room, “women cry.”
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“Well, I’ve cried, too,” Evans says.
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“Not that I’ve seen. You cried alone in your closet,” says Lee.
<!--end paragraph--> <!--begin paragraph-->
“I cried in my beer.”
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“The notion of taking chances is definitely more male,” Lee says. “Look, men are much more willing to take a shot on something with incomplete knowledge.”
What If Women Ran Wall Street? -- New York Magazine
According to a new breed of researchers from the field of behavioral finance, Wall Street’s volatility is really driven by our body chemistry. It’s the chemicals pulsing through traders’ veins that propel them to place insane bets and enable bank executives to make risky decisions—and those same chemicals tend to have the same effect on everyone, turning them into a herd of overheated animals.
And because the vast majority of these traders and finance executives are men, the most important chemical in question is testosterone.
<!--end paragraph--> <!--begin paragraph-->
Here are a few things we know about testosterone: Both men and women produce it, but men make fifteen times as much of it as women, on average. It causes all sorts of physical differences—in body hair, muscle mass, jawlines, and so on.
Lee is sitting at a trading desk with his friend Harley Evans, a derivatives trader at a firm called Mako Financial Markets, talking about gender differences in their line of work. “They never got ruffled, never got upset,” Lee continues. “Losing their temper? Never.”
<!--end paragraph--> <!--begin paragraph-->
“I think women can be very emotional, too,” Evans says, not entirely convinced.
<!--end paragraph--> <!--begin paragraph-->
“Women respond to stress differently,” Lee says. Rather than throwing the phone across the room, “women cry.”
<!--end paragraph--> <!--begin paragraph-->
“Well, I’ve cried, too,” Evans says.
<!--end paragraph--> <!--begin paragraph-->
“Not that I’ve seen. You cried alone in your closet,” says Lee.
<!--end paragraph--> <!--begin paragraph-->
“I cried in my beer.”
<!--end paragraph--> <!--begin paragraph-->
“The notion of taking chances is definitely more male,” Lee says. “Look, men are much more willing to take a shot on something with incomplete knowledge.”
What If Women Ran Wall Street? -- New York Magazine
