This past April, newspapers were a twitter with the discovery made by two Cambridge University researchers: John Coates, a former trading floor manager on Wall Street, and Joe Herbert, a neuroscientist. In their abstract, they wrote:
We found that a trader’s morning testosterone level predicts his day’s profitability. We also found that a trader’s cortisol rises with both the variance of his trading results and the volatility of the market. Our results suggest that higher testosterone may contribute to economic return, whereas cortisol is increased by risk.
Their research findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Endogenous steroids and financial risk taking on a London trading floor.
So, as The Guardian observed Testosterone is the secret ingredient for making (and losing) lots of money. “Money doesn’t make the world go round: it’s testosterone. The more that traders have, the richer they’ll become – up to a point.”