Higher Salary? Check the Fingers on the High Five! :Dave’s Diary

You have to hand it to a guy with a long ring finger…or rather he’ll probably just take it!  Men whose ring fingers are longer than their index fingers appear to be more successful at the frantic, high-frequency trading in financial districts, reports the University of Cambridge in England.  Just having a longer ring finger was equal to years of experience on the job. Odd isn’t it?

This same ring-to-index finger ratio has also been associated with success in competitive sports, such as soccer and basketball. The length of one's fingers is determined during fetal development. When the ring finger is longer, it generally indicates a greater exposure to the male hormone androgen. The study found some amazing results:

• Those whose ring fingers were longer than their index fingers made 11 times more money than those with the shortest ring fingers.
• When only experience was compared, the most experienced traders made about nine times more than the least experienced ones during the same time period.
• When the team examined the results of only the experienced traders, those with longer ring fingers earned five times as much as those with shorter ring fingers. In other words, finger length counted more than experience.

Just because this finger ratio appears to predict the success of financial traders, the researchers caution it does not necessarily mean that others with this finger length will excel at financial activities. The study findings were reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.