From The Mouths Of Babes

In the gloom of this week's world stock markets a simple little experiment was run this week. Three people were given 5,000 imaginary British pounds (about $7,000) to invest in an experiment to see who'd do best, reports CBS News Correspondent Mark Phillips.

A professional investment adviser, a so-called financial astrologer who picked stocks with help from above and beyond and Tia Roberts, a 4-year-old who picked her investments like she was grabbing snow flakes.

"I picked them at random," admitted Tia.

Guess who won.

"Therefore I'm delighted to announce that Tia is the winner," announced Peter Briggs of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

Of course in this week's red colored, tumbling market, winning actually meant losing less.

And Tia's portfolio was down just 4-and-a-half percent, beating the other two contestants handily and beating the London market's falling index as well.

What began as a hopefully amusing experiment has become something of an embarrassment for the big financial houses. Being beaten by a 4-year-old has reinforced the suspicion that in times of real financial flux nobody really knows what's going on.

The real brokers would do well to adopt Tia's simple philosophy, "pick the winners."

From the mouths of babes.

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