'Rats smarter than Wall Street weasels'

25 September 2014 - 02:00 By ©The Daily Telegraph
subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now
Image: Gallo Images/ Thinkstock

Rats apparently make better investment decisions than humans do.

Website RatTraders.com stated: "They outperform most human traders and represent a much more economic solution for your trading desk."

The rats are trained to respond to "ticker tracks", which are real-time price data that have been converted into piano sounds. The pitch of the note rises and falls in accordance with the price movement.

The rats then press one of two buttons: green for long, if they think the price will move up, and red for short, if they think it will drop.

A correct decision is rewarded with "a bonus" - food - while a bad call results in a light shock.

"The goal is to make them find out sound patterns that humans are not able to recognise and predict the next market move after the last sound heard," the website stated.

What is more, project CEO Michael Marcovici said, "the price of a trading rat is just a fragment of what a human trader costs".

Basic training lasts three to six months, then there is six months' specialist coaching. But they go on learning after starting work - with each trade they make.

subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now