I found an article that I loved this morning written by Susan Pinker in the Globe and Mail. Her article ‘Can’t stand putting your money at risk? Blame your DNA’ talks about the possibility that your investor risk profile might be encoded in your DNA.

Pinker writes about a study written by David Cesarini, a New York University professor who worked with three colleges studying 25,000 Swedish twins on their financial habits.  The study ended up focusing on 11,000 twins, both identical and fraternal, with the goal of discovering if identical twins would choose the same financial options are fraternal twins.

The research showed that 42% of diversity shown in the results could be predicted based on a person’s genetic background.  The research showed that identical twins resembled each other in their loss-aversion patterns.

Although it is easy to point out the limitations and methods used to perform this research, the study is a fun and light piece of financial news during the slow summer markets.

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Yields on 10 Year Italian government bonds jumped 30 basis points this morning to break 6% on Tuesday, the first time a rate that high appeared since 1997. Italy’s interest rate is edging closer to 7% , as the world begins to fear that they might not be able to finance their activities any longer.

In order to stop rates from rising, the European Central Bank will have to take steps which will ensure that the problems in Italy does not create a domino effect across Europe. The Central bank would have to commit to buying government debt to stop rising interest rates.

Investors are dumping the euro and European shares over worries that Italy and Spain will meet the same fate as Greece, Portugal and Ireland.  The worries have resulted in the highest cost of insurance for euro peripheral bond issuers in history.

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The loonie dropped for a second trading day after traders fled from the Euro into the dollar amid crisis regarding Europe’s sovereign debt.

Well the loonie is still outperforming 11 of the 16 most traded currencies and gained ground against the Euro, investors fled for the safety of America, even though the country had released their payroll data which was less than the worst forecast predicted by analysts.

With so much going on in the world, the financial markets are feeling the stress and the loonie has held up relatively well compared to its peers. Although the American dollar is expected to out preform in the near future, the loonie is expected to do better than both the Australia and New Zealand dollars in the coming weeks.

The Canadian dollar is currently trading 1.0322 American dollars per loonie, down .85% from Friday.

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