Cicada-Like Synchronized Traders Have Fewer Losses, Study Shows

Traders who align their transactions much like cicadas synchronize their chirping make a profit more of the time, according to a study of market behaviors.

The more often traders acted within the same one-second window, the more money they made at the end of the day, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Traders make a profit 60 percent of the time when they’re in sync, more than the overall average of 55 percent profitable trades, said study author Brian Uzzi, who is the co-director of the Northwestern Institute in Complex Systems at Northwestern University in Evanston.