Are Pet Rats the Future of the Stock Market?

Recently, it has come to our attention that rats are now becoming quite sophisticated wall street traders. Rats are entering the stock market, and they’re becoming quite the little celebrities! Before you assume that we are up to some shenanigans and sharing bogus stuff with you- hear it out! It’s true, and it’s actually pretty cool! You might just be inclined to share this on Facebook, with your friends, to show them just how AWESOME they are. Or perhaps, you might decided to get your rat to turn you into a millionaire! Actually… that’s not a bad idea at all come to think of it… ANYWAYS, check it out!

Exactly HOW Are Rats Predicting the Future of the Stock Market Exchange Values?

We all know that rats respond to training, and are very intelligent creatures. In this instance, they were trained with both positive reinforcement for correct predictions of stock value trading trends and minute shocks for incorrect predictions. As this training continued, the rats began to accurately predict whether the stock values would increase or decrease based upon how they performed in the past. The trainers did this by turning the values of the stocks into notes on a piano, a weird stock market song-type-deal. The rats would then predict which notes would follow based upon the patterns they were hearing. When correct, they would earn a little treat.

 

Have These Wall Street Junkie Rats Truly Been Successful at Predicting the Trading Values of Stocks?

At best, the rats were performing at about 57% accuracy in their predictions regarding the highly volatile stock market. When we stop to think about just how crazy those graphs and numbers get, we can all say that they were doing pretty darn good- and it has even been claimed that at times, they were performing better than many of some of the top human traders! Michael Marcovici had achieved this success rate by thinning out his “staff”, and only continuing to train rats who had a 52% success rate or higher according to The Atlantic. He took his best performers and bred them; and was left with junior traders who were even better than their parents! I think the really adorable part of all of this is the fact that Marcovici decided to create a satirical mock corporate website for his fellow rats: Rat Traders.

Are Rats Really Going to Become Serious Traders in the Future?

As promising as their futures might be in the trading market one day, today simply isn’t their day. While they’ve shown lots of success, many businesses just aren’t interested in swapping out their human traders for small, furry rodents. It’s a bit of a species discrimination case, but equal rights don’t apply to our fellow rats- YET. Plus, their attention spans just won’t cut it. After twenty predictions, they get tired of the whole deal. Who knows, maybe their attention spans are better than we think, and they are simply returning to their previous, more important task: plotting to take over the world! After all, if our stock market crashes, our economy does. These furry minions might just be the REAL Pinky & the Brain! I’m sorry, I have to do this…