י Game Theory as Training for Futures Traders. Someone emailed me saying,

Most of what we trade are the U.S. treasuries that are traded at the CBOT. Since most of our liquidity comes from a screen based platform(trading from a computer)we would like traders who are able to quickly breakdown a series of financial occurances to predict more often than not a market direction. My question to you is if you think there would be a correlation between students who have a degree or a background in game theory and being able to become good futures traders.
Here's my answer.
If you learn how to think like a game theorist, what you've learned is how to put yourselves in other people's shoes--- to understand what they are doing given their information and objectives, which will be different from your own info and objectives. And also, you learn to deduce what somebody's info and preferences is after observing their behavior. That's just what you do.

I should warn you, though, that it is tough to teach this, and much easier just to teach the math, as opposed to the way of thinking. Students tend to focus on the math, because it is obviously hard, and not on the "word problem" aspect. Also, some people come by the game theory approach naturally, whereas other people have to be taught it.

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