Testosterone drugs for trading?

Ok, two friends of mine from Boston who both trade mid 6 figures accounts privately started using bodybuilding drugs a few months ago. In particular Testabol Propionate. They are not working out, though. They are not looking for any physical improvement, rather for a psychological effect.

Both day trade ES futures since years.

The sole reason (or so they say) is that a higher dose of testosterone in their blood increases their aggressiveness while trading. Also, so one claimed, it feels "easier" to enter seemingly risky positions. They claim their performance in $ amounts increased by 20-25% since they started the testosterone injections. I was unable to verify this, could all be BS but I've know these guys for years.

I find this both very disconcerting and interesting. Is there any research anywhere about the influence of testosterone on mental performance and decision making?

Thanks.

 

...they should be careful if they have kids.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/science/17puberty.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Preschool Puberty, and a Search for the Causes - Lou Beach
Published: October 17, 2006

Parents often think their children grow up too quickly, but few are prepared for the problem that Dr. Michael Dedekian and his colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Medical School reported recently.

At the annual Pediatric Academic Society meeting in May in San Francisco, they presented a report that described how a preschool-age girl, and then her kindergarten-age brother, mysteriously began growing pubic hair. These cases were not isolated; in 2004, pediatric endocrinologists from San Diego reported a similar cluster of five children.

It turns out that there have been clusters of cases in which children have prematurely developed signs of puberty, outbreaks similar to epidemics of influenza or environmental poisonings. In 1979, the medical journal The Lancet described an outbreak of breast enlargement among hundreds of Italian schoolchildren, probably caused by estrogen contamination of beef and poultry. Similar epidemics in Puerto Rico and Haiti were tracked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the 1980’s.

Increasingly — though the science is still far from definitive and the precise number of such cases is highly speculative — some physicians worry that children are at higher risk of early puberty as a result of the increasing prevalence of certain drugs, cosmetics and environmental contaminants, called “endocrine disruptors,” that can cause breast growth, pubic hair development and other symptoms of puberty.

Most commonly, outbreaks of puberty in children are traced to accidental drug exposures from products that are used incorrectly.

Dr. Dedekian’s first patient was evaluated for possible genetic endocrine problems and a rare brain tumor before the cause of her puberty was discovered. It turned out that her testosterone level was almost 100 times normal, in the range of an adult man. The same problem affected her brother.

The doctors realized that the girl’s father was using a concentrated testosterone skin cream bought from an Internet compounding pharmacy for cosmetic and sexual performance purposes. From normal skin contact with their father, the children absorbed the testosterone, which caused pubic hair growth and genital enlargement. The boy, in particular, also developed some aggressive behavior problems.

Sex hormones are potent because they are easily absorbed through the skin and resist degradation better than many other hormones. Unlike protein-based hormones like insulin, sex hormones like testosterone and estrogen are technically steroids, meaning they are derived from cholesterol.

Primarily made by the liver, cholesterol begins with tiny pieces of sugar that are joined, twisted and oxidized in a dizzying series to make an end product that resembles the interlinked rings of the Olympic emblem. Dr. Joseph L. Goldstein, Nobel Laureate and a biochemist in Texas, once called it “the most highly decorated small molecule in biology,” because 13 Nobel Prizes have been awarded for its study.

Through further processing, primarily in the gonads and adrenal glands, cholesterol is converted into sex hormones like estrogen and testosterone. Kenneth Lee Jones, the former chief of pediatrics at the University of California, San Diego, noted pediatric cases similar to those described by Dr. Dedekian in a 2004 report in the journal Pediatrics.

At that time, unregulated “prohormones” like Andro, famously used by Mark McGwire, the former St. Louis Cardinals power hitter, and banned by federal law in 2005, were available as topical sprays used to enhance libido. Dr. Jones said the sprays used by adults in some households permeated the children’s bedsheets, and the early puberty stopped only when the adults stopped using the sprays and also discarded old sheets.

Testosterone-containing products are not the only trigger of disordered puberty in children.

In a 1998 paper in the journal Clinical Pediatrics, Dr. Chandra Tiwary, the former chief of pediatric endocrinology at Brook Army Medical Center in Texas, reported an outbreak of early breast development in four young African-American girls who used shampoos that contained estrogen and placental extract. The early puberty reversed once the shampoo was stopped.

In the tradition of previous physicians who deliberately exposed themselves to possible pathogens, Dr. Tiwary tried the shampoos on himself. He carefully measured his own levels of various male and female sex hormones to establish his baseline, used the shampoos for a few days, then repeated the tests.

While Dr. Tiwary is quick to admit that his unpublished findings must be interpreted with great caution, some of his sex hormone levels changed by almost 40 percent after he used the shampoos. In some cases, substances other than sex steroids may also disrupt normal sexual development. In Boston at the annual Endocrine Society meeting in June, Clifford Bloch of the University of Colorado School of Medicine presented several cases of young men who had developed marked breast enlargement from using shampoos containing lavender and tea tree oils, which are widely used essential oil additives that present no problem for adults. (Unlike Dr. Dedekian’s cases, these cases were not a result of passive transfer from parents. The boys themselves used the shampoos.)

Dr. Bloch collaborated with scientists at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in North Carolina to test the oils on human breast cells grown in test tubes. Lavender and tea tree oil had the same effect on the cells as estrogen.

Dr. Bloch speculates that the findings, which he is submitting for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, may explain the boys’ breast growth. He noted, however, that cells in a test tube are a far cry from humans, so the relationship of the essential oil to breast growth remains hypothetical.

While pediatric endocrinologists have implicated pharmaceutical or personal care products for causing pubertal problems in children, some environmental scientists also claim that some widespread industrial and pharmaceutical pollutants harm the normal sexual development of fish and animals. By extension, they may also contribute to earlier or disrupted puberty in children, these scientists contend. Robert Havelock, a senior reproductive toxicologist at the Environmental Protection Agency, said these concerns “caused a shift in worry from cancer to noncancer” effects of environmental pollution over the past decade.

In 1994, scientists found that estrogen-like chemicals from plastics manufacturing plants that had contaminated sewers in England caused genetically male fish to develop into females. In the early 1980’s, major spills of the DDT-like pesticide dicofol in Florida led to the “feminization” of the reproductive tracts of male alligators.

(contd)

 

"Testabol prop" is a fast acting ester manufactured by British Dragon, an underground lab. They're idiots. Where have they been injecting? How long have they been on test prop? Do they have any post-cycle plans?

 

Hmm it does open up an interesting area of debate on using legal meds to improve the trading mind set..

Rather than taking drugs to increasing reaction time & aggression, I have come across more people using prescription meds such as opioids like codine, Benzodiazepines, Tricyclic antidepressant and betablockers ect ect ...to carm any excitment impluse down so they can trade in more hypnotic controlled mind set, to reduce overtrading and emotional impluse trading.

 

You guys are scaring me, seriously. Heck why not take some PCP, it's supposed to make people feel strong and superhuman.

I myself have been using some subconscious reprogramming lessons. I have seen some positive results. Nothing earth shattering, but I am not going to take drugs to get over my fear of trading.

Honestly though, I think it's like anything else,you did before, that you were afraid of doing. You met your fears head on worked through the fear by doing it and working through the discomfort until it became comfortable. It's called pushing yourself and it has been mentioned on this forum many times.

 

Problematic logic. The test prop will not significantly increase aggression. Use r3-IGF-1 or rhGH if the goal is to improve cognition and motor skills.

 

... :eek: LOL

Then they would really LOVE trading while the were cracked-out! You should recommend it to them. But first they should build-up their tolerance for extremely irresponsible behavior by:

a) Trading while drunk (at least 2 beers and 3 shots), and then move on to;

b) Trading while high on marijuana, after which they should combine the two for optimum recklessness.

Then and only then should they move on to the crack stage.

and you keep thinking you've heard everything ...

 

The military finds use for dextroamphetamine in CONOPS and SUSOPS conditions. Then uses sedatives such as benzodiazepines ect to offset the Dexedrine.


Some say trading is a kin to war so people will strive to find an edge to win.


I don't for a second advocate the use of Meds for trading..Its madness the long term effects from can be devastating.

But you can see why people try and take the easy way to control their mind set, with out realising the problems their going to have to deal with later down the line.

 

reminds me of a story i read a while ago from what i remember someone high up in a firm(i think Knight securities) that had a huge coke habit like 300k a yr, and his excuse was he had to be alert cause he was working so much

 

1. The military gives solders drugs to dull the effects of, well, what they have to do, to do a GOOD JOB (no smiles or jokes on this one, it's very serious)

2. They are in all probability creating long-term drug addicts, a percentage of whom will have a severe inability to re-socialize themselves into "normal society". But they [the military] don't care about that, now do they?