Four-year-old girl joins fantasy stock market experiment

An experienced investor, a four-year-old girl and a financial astrologer have started a week-long experiment to compare different ways of predicting the stock market.

The experiment will see the three invest in a 'fantasy' 5,000 stock portfolio with gains and losses being compared.

The British Association for the Advancement of Science is conducting the experiment devised by Dr Richard Wiseman, senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, to coincide with National Science Week, which runs from March 16 to 25.

Mark Goodson will use his experience as a private investor to choose his shares.

Astrologer Christeen Skinner will use the movement of the heavens to predict stock market fluctuations.

And little Tia Laverne Roberts, from south-east London, will provide the random element - choosing her shares by grabbing notes marked one to 100 to represent the FTSE-100 index.

The experiment was launched at Barclays Stockbrokers at Royal Mint Court in London.

Dr Wiseman said: "This is basically a fun experiment, but it will be fascinating to see if anyone can predict the stock market over such a short period of time."

He predicted that, over the week, the two experts would not perform any better than the random selection. Daily updates on progress will be available on the BAAS website.

Hilary Cook, head of research with Barclays Stockbrokers, said: "This will be an interesting experiment. We normally recommend that individuals see the stock market as a five-year investment but, in the current climate, the results over the week should be fascinating."