Length DOES Matter

It's a blow to masculinity.  Seems that everyone from the Financial Times to the Fort Mill Times is reporting on the results of a study from the University of Cambridge in England.  Researchers compared the length of a man's ring finger to the length of the index finger on his right hand and correlated the results with success in high-frequency trading on the London stock market (a longer ring finger occurs as the result of fetal exposure to higher levels of the male hormone, androgen).

The researchers found that traders with ring fingers longer than pointers made eleven times more money than their stubbier counterparts over a twenty-month study period (the more experienced traders made about nine times more than the less-so, and in the experienced group, the long johns made five times more than the nubbins).  It's not a total loss, though, since the reverse ratio has been found to demonstrate skill in math, science, and engineering.

This certainly has to cause more than a few Gordon Gekko wannabes alarm and perhaps several to return to a therapist's couch.  I mean, if making and waving about obscene wads of cash compensates a man for a lack of endowment, then this study basically implies that a session of cheirognomy is probably in the cards to discover if someone truly IS behind nature's eight ball, BEFORE they waste all that time and money at B school fostering delusions of hedge fund grandiosity.