At first I thought it was a humorous article in the entertainment section of short list, but it's source is an actual reputable source (The Gaurdian/The Observer) in the Money section - which may lead itself to credibility and not just a light hearted experiment. I think this leads people who don't have a real understanding of the stock market or trading to actually believe it's just gambling which is unfortunate as it prevents people from investing or learning about finance which can then translate into understandings of personal finance or amount of income actually gone toward saving/investing which causes a lot of the problems we see in the world today (too much debt, not enough savings). The sensationalism and conclusions from this study are detrimential to society and help foster an ill-informed culture about money.

Flaws with the study:

Small sample size: If I picked one person at random from a room on the right side and another from the left side and claimed that the whole left or right side was taller based on the results of just the one person picked you'd say I'm retarded. They do the same thing here, choose one of each and say the results are perfectly scientifically valid and worthy of reaching any sort of conclusion. They should have had AT LEAST 5 different cats, 5 different experienced stock pickers and 5 different middle schoolers - if not more.

Time frame used: The time frame used is only one year but anyone worth their grain in salt will admit that stocks are a long-term investment, year to year is just variation and noise but it's years that matter for actual performance. Consistancy. If say, 2013 - CUU pays out and I do well on my post CUU-picks and have a 3 digit return, does that mean I'm better than Warran Buffet? Most would probably say I'm not, and rightly so.

Artificial constraints: They were all only allowed to trade once a quarter and presumably didn't have any ability to place stops. If you look at the original article, they were ahead all year up until the last quarter where the experienced team lost 7% on average and up to 15% on some trades. If they had stop losses or were allowed to trade more frequently they would have still come out ahead. Outside of that, it isn't clear how the cats trades worked - did they always trade out at the end of the quarter? They chose by throwing a ball...

Anyway - flawed experiment and it's why articles like this is why people have a poor understanding of science (experimental designs, ability to draw conclusions etc.) as well as economics and finance. Fun writing and analysis exercise though. But that's why we invest in the stock market, because this article and it's source: (http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2013/jan/13/investments-stock-picking) are biased and flawed =).