Your poll said no...
The Wall Street Journal claims that Shanghai's market runs off superstition – most notably Chinese investors that buy stocks on the favorability of numbers that contain 8s. This superstitious Shanghai market was the alleged trigger (among other things) of the February 2007's “Dow Dive” of 416 points.
AOL's Money & Finance “Blogging Stocks” sites a Chinese investor, Yan Caign, who bought 30,000 shares of a cement company, Jilin Yatai Co., because of a “lucky” ticker number than contained double 8s [60088]. Shortly after, his shares tripled and he walked away with $50,000 under the sheer belief that the double 8s brought him luck.
Instead of using tools like SmartScan, should we use a Jinga board to pick potential markets? Why is Shanhai's market so based around luck?
Blogging Stock's, Peter Cohan says we must look at who's doing the trading to truly understand why. In the US, the majority of trading is done by large financial institutions that use sophisticated fundamental and technical analysis. However, 60-80% of Chinese investors are individuals who gamble on numerical superstitions, with little understanding of concepts from the financial arena.
So in the US markets, we are not known to use superstition in our trading, but I am sure that we all make small behavior modifications when sitting down in front of the computer screen. Jeff White of The Stock Bandit claims that although he is not superstitious, he will never have a sports car as his PC wallpaper. He said that his cold streaks were either to blame on the computer wallpaper, or his over-eagerness to earn the money for that dream ride on the screen.
We asked Traders Blog visitors if, as traders, they were superstitious.
We heard you scream no.
But, if holding my breath, while wearing a necklace of garlic and humming the National Anthem makes me $50,000 within a matter of minutes... you can bet I'd do it.
