Bacteria Behaviour Can Shed Light On How Financial Markets Work 91
notscientific writes "Bacteria invest in proteins in an attempt to reduce stress or increase energy intake, while humans invest in cash. In both cases, better tradeoffs pay off. The similarities in tradeoffs faced by both bacteria and humans during investment are actually quite similar. Now, using synthetic biology, a group of scientists has shown that the outcomes of investment decisions in bacteria can be precisely defined, alluding to the idea that human investment activities, such as financial markets, can be thoroughly understood as well, and even modelled."
This is a surprise? (Score:4, Interesting)
It makes perfect sense. Both activities involve the same types of selective process that guides evolution in general, be it biological evolution or financial.
So bacteria have a form of high frequency trading? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This is a surprise? (Score:2, Interesting)
Economics is NOT SCIENCE. why you sk ? simple : NO PREDICTIVE power whatsoever.
Re:This is a surprise? (Score:5, Interesting)
So if we dip hedge fund managers in acid, they will work harder? Lets tests this, we need a 100k sample size.
Financial markets are more like lemmings (Score:5, Interesting)
Two points
First slashdot summary tells about financial markets, TFA talks about businesses. I understand that businesses are dwarfs in financial markets, that vast majority of transactions being financial products non based on real economy.
Second, financial markets are more like lemmings than bacterias. They have nasty group behavior that cause all actors to jump into the sea at the same time. Surprisingly, bacterias look to fit neoclassic economy models better than humans, as their decisions seem more rationals.