Cat Beats Stock Pros in Investment Experiment - East Idaho News
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Cat Beats Stock Pros in Investment Experiment

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GETTY B 102711 StockTickerJPG?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1358245732515Comstock/Thinkstock(LONDON) — It’s long been sniped that investing in the stock market all but amounts to a high-profile crap shoot, and an experiment recently conducted by the U.K.’s Guardian seems to bear that out.

The newspaper started 2012 by giving around $8,000 each to a team of investment experts, a group of business students, and a cat, to see who’d best beat Wall Street.

While the experts used their knowledge to make informed decisions, the students resorted to best guesses, and Orlando the cat’s picks were made even more randomly — by the feline flinging a toy onto various company names.

At the end of the first quarter, the pros scored a profit of £497 — or around $800, compared to the cat’s $600.  At that point, the investors were allowed to change their strategies if they wanted.  The students and the cat partook, but the experts let it ride.

However, at the end of the year, the experts only managed a profit of around $280, while Orlando the cat sat pretty with a profit exceeding $870. The kids, meanwhile, had a loss of $250 for the year, though their final quarter profit bested the others.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

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