NEWS

Rat traders Rats are better futures traders than the leading human fund managers, according to a Vienna-based artist.

Michael Morcovici claims that he has trained a group of rats to recognise sound patterns generated from the market’s tick data. He says that the rats learned to predict the next market move after hearing the last sound; the rats pressed a green button for "long" (if the prices were expected to move up) or a red button for "short" (if they predicted a decline in prices).

Eventually, the rats were tested with real-time data. At the end of the 12-week training programme, the performances of the top four rats was said to be comparable to those of the world' s best fund managers.