Gene of the Week: Investing
Posted by Jesse Reynolds April 7, 2009
Biopolitical Times
Jason Zweig is a personal finance columnist at the Wall Street Journal, and wrote a book called Your Money and Your Brain: How The New Science Of Neuroeconomics Can Help Make You Rich. Thus, I would have thought that he would be smarter than choosing to open an article called "Is Your Investing Personality in Your DNA?" with this:
Maybe your DNA made you do it.However, digging deeper into the article, the reader learns that
Whatever investing mistake you have committed lately, there is probably a gene that is often associated with that behavior. Are you predestined to be the prisoner of your genetic code?
Perhaps 20% of the variation in risk-taking among individuals is genetically determined; the rest comes from our upbringing, experience, education and training.Of course, there is much more to good investing than appropriate risk taking. Yet one-fifth of one aspect of investing is genetically controlled, and the column still opens with a heading that would make Gregory Clark proud.