Ferdinand Piech, outgoing CEO of Europe‘s biggest carmaker Volkswagen AG, addresses the media and confesses he could not make a good forecast of the company‘s future market share (his successor B. Pischetsrieder in rear). PHOTO - REUTERS
LONDON – A five-year-old girl beat a financial analyst and an astrologer in an experiment to find the most accurate stock market predictions over a year. Tia Lavern Roberts not only outperformed her fellow participants in the National Science Week challenge but defied a 16 percent drop in Britain‘s FTSE 100 index of leading shares with her selection of issues. Her fantasy 5,000-pound ($7,052) portfolio rose 5.8 percent, while the one selected by analyst Mark Goodson lost 46.2 percent over the year. Astrologer Christeen Skinner‘s portfolio dropped 6.2 percent.
Goodson used his years of expertise and computer analysis, and Skinner based her selection on planetary movements. „During an unstable year for the stock market…Tia‘s random selection has still managed to outperformed the others,“ Richard Wiseman, a psychologist from the University of Hertfordshire who devised the experiment, said in statement.
Reuters
