I was recently hired by a proprietary trading firm to conduct some research to see if there are any correlations between shaving and trading. It is my belief, as I mentioned to the firm, that there are direct correlations between the two and thought I’d share the results.

Frequency:

• Daily shavers were more apt to be in/out of trades quickly and rarely held overnight.
• Once per week shavers used longer term moving averages and held trades, on average, 3 days.
• Those that didn’t shave were also those that traded without a net. In fact, 70% of the largest losses at the firm were committed by hairy individuals.

Speed:

• Shaving completed in under three minutes led to cuts more than 3 times per week, on average. They were also those that had mistakes in trade setups as well as executions (i.e., no stop, no target, etc.).
• Those that took more than 10 minutes to shave were prone to using too many indicators and as a result missed good trade setups. However, the trades they did take were big winners.

Direction:

• Those that shaved “with the grain” had significantly greater profits per trade than those that shaved against the grain.
• Shaving in the shower was directly correlated to position size.
• Sink shavers had the tendency to stay in a trade too long.

Instrument:

• Those that used disposable razors traded any security regardless of volume or price.
• Electric razor users were more inclined to trade blue chip names.
• Those that shaved with the 4 and 5 blade razors gravitated towards the leveraged ETFs.
• Straight blade shavers traded futures commodities.

For those of you who think the study is sexist, you have overlooked something. I never once mentioned facial hair. Shaving, in this study, referred to any body part that one would shave such as legs, pits, face, etc.

OK, actually this study is total BS but it confirms something I learned in graduate school. If I want to “prove” something I can, by conducting biased research and fudging the data. The point of this post is a slap in the face of all of you (me included) who were front-running the turn of the month this week. Stats like that are nice, until they’re not. For those of you that actually started to think of correlations between your shaving and trading, we need to talk.

Keep the biases out of your trading. Be proactive!