If you ask a trader, or someone who studies them, what the single most important factor is in determining whether a person will be good at trading, they will say that it’s the ability to control one’s emotions.
The trouble for all those men pouring into the trading desks is that recent studies suggest purely rational behavior may not come as naturally to them as gender stereotypes would suggest. ...“There were always very few women ...
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typical New York mag story: high-end slap-dash splashy, playing to the prejudices of its readers. In the midst of a gigantic and endless problem with banking, we are supposed to think it's all about personality/hormones? Puleeze. These crises are structural, as any 2-bit economist can tell you. The risks would be the same if computers ran Wall Street/banking—oh, wait... they do, don't they? (Derivatives, derivatives...) If hormone therapy or gender reassignment were a quick fix, we'd see bankers from Summers and Geithner on down lining up for help (or phoning their manicurists for advice).
