好书推荐TheHourBetweenDogandWolf

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金融时报-高盛2012年度商业图书

《The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Risk-Taking, Gut Feelings and the Biology of Boom and Bust 》

By John Coates

行为金融学的延伸——生物金融学？神经金融学？分子金融学？荷尔蒙金融学？

也是一本视角新鲜，有启发的书。

一向业绩长红的明星交易员值得一直信赖吗?

我们经常会听到某一个明星的交易员,会将多年来替银行赚得的钱全数赔回去.甚至动摇该银行的根基.

为什么会这样?

是绩效评估的问题吗?

难道是银行里负责风险管理的经理们错估了交易员的操作技能??

这是有可能的.不过最近的研究提出了另一种说法:是不断的赢钱冲昏了交易员.

人类生理机能(Biology)就可用来解释是什么驱使交易员采取这种愚蠢的举动.

面对胜负抉择,身心的生理状态决定一切?

每当我们面对危难或者金融风险时,我们不只是心理挂念着,整个人会都会紧绷起来准备着.身体与脑子就结合成一个单一的战

斗体.想象一下,当一个商业或者金融的消息如电流般的传入交易所时,会发生怎样的场面!

所有交易员的神经就立时处在高度的警觉状态.呼吸加速,快速跳动的心脏已准备着行动.肌肉绷紧,胃纠结,开始冒汗,

这些都是准备一博的姿态或者讯号.人类在处理讯息时不像计算机一般不带丝毫的感情.我们会整个身心都忘情的投入.

变狼变狗的生理影响!

剑桥大学的一位著名的神经学教授约翰 高德斯(John Coates) 与同僚以伦敦的交易所进行一系列的实验,发现处在连续牛气(Winning streak)的状态下

我们的身心会过度反应,因此在风险的处理上会变得没有理性的病态.男性进入竞争的场合,男性贺尔蒙的睪丸激素会飙升,血红素增加,因此脑部及血中的含氧量也增加,增强了他们的自信与顷向冒险的嗜好.赢家会分泌出更高的睪丸激素,而由此又提升了赢的机会.形成一种正面的循环,就如动物行为上所熟知的赢的效果.

就像运动员在预备竞赛及交易员要购入风险高的资产时,甚至如政客准备要参与一项选举.这一阶段正是它们身心转变的时 刻.就如中世纪法文所称的"狼与狗之间的时刻"(The Houe between Dog and Wolf).

男性贺尔蒙伴随着胜利螺漩似的上升,到达某一点时,判断力就会减弱.风险的承担若带来好的成果时会型塑成个人过度的自信.不断赢钱(winning streak)的交易员会让自己站在一个角度,面对一直恶化,风险极大的交易不断的增加筹码.一旦交易失败了,交易员的生理机能会有怎样的现象呢?

他们对压力的反应又会超过了头.在危机来临时,人们的不安全感能够激发压力贺尔蒙,因而触发了焦虑的情绪.会唤起过去让他困扰的回忆.既使没有危险存在他也会退缩.

这种压力的反应可能助长了非理性的选择,削弱个人经营自己立场的能力,在相对乐观的时刻不敢承担风险.简单的说,交易员的生理状态会让他在连续赢钱时在投资上承担更大的风险,反过来说,失利危机时,市场上有机会了却过度的退缩.

观察交易员身心细微的变化管控风险!

银行界负责风险管理的经理们,必须去了解这样的生理变化.现在他们所依赖的统计工具无法掌握潜藏在交易员风险取向底下变动的暗流.

当然,他们可以从研究运动伤害的科学家们学习如何适时指出运动员的亢奋状态,过度疲倦或者情绪压力过大而给予调整.他们必须像教练调度运动员一样经营他们的交易员.这意味者什么吗?就是偶偶且适时的将他们调离现场直到他们的生理机能恢复平静.

Introduction (Quoted from Amazon.com):

A successful Wall Street trader turned Cambridge neuroscientist reveals the biology of boom and bust and how risk taking transforms our body chemistry, driving us to extremes of euphoria and risky behavior or stress and depression

The laws of financial boom and bust, it turns out, have more than a little to do with male hormones. In a series of groundbreaking experiments, Dr. John Coates identified a feedback loop between testosterone and success that dramatically lowers the fear of risk in men, especially younger men—significantly, the fear of risk is not reduced in women. Similarly, intense failure leads to a rise in levels of cortisol, the antitestosterone hormone that lowers the appetite for risk across an entire spectrum of decisions.

Coates had set out to prove what was already a strong intuition from his previous life: Before he became a world-class neuroscientist, Coates ran a derivatives desk in New York. As a successful trader on Wall Street, “the hour between dog and wolf” was the moment traders transformed-they would become revved up, exuberant risk takers, when flying high, or tentative, risk-averse creatures, when cowering from their losses. Coates understood instinctively that these dispositions were driven by body chemistry—and then he proved it.

The Hour Between Dog and Wolf expands on Coates’s own research to offer lessons from the entire exploding new field—the biology of risk. He brings his research to life by telling a story of fictional traders who get caught up in a bubble and then a crash. As these traders place their bets and live with the results, Coates looks inside bodies to describe the physiology driving them into irrational exuberance and then pessimism. Risk concentrates the mind—and the body—like nothing else, altering our physiology in ways that have profound and lasting effects. What’s more, biology shifts investors' risk preferences across the business cycle and can precipitate great change in the marketplace.

书评选录：

While computers may be the backbone of modern investment infrastructure, they can sometimes make a spectacular mess of things. Take the 2010 flash crash, when failures in computer trading systems across the country caused stocks to plunge 10% in a matter of minutes. Events such as this can make investors pine for the rock solid instincts of an experienced broker. Investors like to think their decisions are driven by reason, research and logic, but according to Cambridge University neuroscientist John Coates, they’re also shaped by biochemical reactions. Coates has combined his unique experience in finance — for years he headed a derivativesdesk in New York – with his PhD in neuroscience to defend this bold theory, which he outlines in his book The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Risk Taking, Gut Feelings and the Biology of Boom and Bust. Much of Coates’ book hinges on the idea that biology, and not just pure reason, drives many of our actions. When it comes to finance, he argues that steroid hormones like testosterone and cortisol also help shape bull and bear markets. Coates bases his theory on studies of the physiological changes that occur when young male traders in London are put in competitive situations, where risk-taking holds the potential for larger rewards. A simple burst of testosterone can help traders make timely and profitable decisions, but when too much testosterone comes into play, overconfident traders tend to take riskier positions, which increase their chance of eventually entering a losing trade. When they do find themselves on the losing end of a trade, cortisol – also known as the anti- testosterone – kicks in. If cortisol remains in the body for too long, traders may become excessively gloomy and risk-averse, lowering their ability to enter a profitable trade. “During a severe bear market, the banking and investment community may rapidly develop into a clinical population,” Coates writes. Coates’ theory may seem simplistic, but he does an admirable job of backing up his arguments with explanations from biochemistry and neurobiology. In doing so, he breaks down the notion of risk into its most basic biological components: cortisol and testosterone. Coates says trading floors could benefit from having greater “testosterone diversity” by, among other things, hiring more women, who typically have 10% to 20% the testosterone levels of men. He further proposes hiring financial professionals entering middle age, as their testosterone levels tend to decline. Undoubtedly, Coates’ work will be controversial. However, he has a knack for taking neuroscience out of the lab and onto the trading floor, and provides unique insight into why human exuberance can sometimes be irrational.

Far from the preserve of cold-blooded rationalism, Wall Street is dominated by primitive drives and hormonal surges, argues this scintillating treatise on the neurobiology of the business cycle. Coates, a Cambridge neuroscientist and ex–Wall Street trader whose previous studies have shown that male traders perform better when they have elevated morning testosterone levels, draws an intimate portrait of life on a trading floor, with its intuitive, rapid-fire deal making under pressure, as an almost physical athleticism directed by brain processes and chemistries evolved for less cerebral pursuits. As bond markets soar and slump, he notes, traders experience involuntary fight-or-flight reflexes, jolts of dopamine, and convulsions of the primal “gut brain.” In bull markets, the euphoric boost in testosterone from successful trades fuels ever crazier risk taking until the inevitable collapse, when the defensive steroid cortisol takes over and turns financiers into risk-averse paralytics dependent on government bailout and stimulus. Coates takes economist John Maynard Keynes’s idea of entrepreneurial “animal spirits” and grounds it in hard science, while introducing readers to a brain that’s inseparably intertwined with a very demanding body. The result is a provocative and entertaining take on the irrational exuberance—and anxiety—of the modern economy. Agent: Natasha Fairweather, AP Watt, U.K. (June)

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