Test Subjects
On my desk is a paper that purports to show how investment preferences are correlated with personality. This being 2017 rather than the Reagan years, the paper doesn t explain that rock-climbers like stocks, while librarians favor bonds. Arguments that physical risk-takers prefer equities have come and gone (and have largely been discredited). This effort, instead, involves investment styles, and it bears a title that only a professor could love: Personality Traits and Portfolio Tilts Toward Value and Size.
All right, two professors the authors being the duo of Andrew Conlin and Jouko Miettunen, from Finland s University of Oulu. (A cold place that; the average January high is -8 degrees Celsius, which doesn t sound a whole lot better when expressed in Fahrenheit.)