Last month, I looked at on whether we would have been in this financial mess if if Lehman Brothers had been Lehman Sisters. The implication: too much testosterone can be a bad thing for investment and risk management.

Now we have a new study, reported here, that testosterone affects financial decision-making, risk-taking and risk aversion among men and women. Too much of the stuff affected people of both genders and as a result, they approached monetary decisions with less caution and flocked to jobs in finance. Think about that next time you talk to a broker or analyst.

Significantly, it affected women too. Higher levels of testosterone were associated with a greater appetite for risk in women, but not among men. But the gender difference to risk aversion disappeared in men and women with similar levels of testosterone.

Testosterone also affected career choice. The researchers found that the link between risk aversion and testosterone predicted career choices after graduation: individuals who were high in testosterone and low in risk aversion chose riskier careers in finance.

in other words, testosterone plays a role in risk taking and long term career choices. As interesting as the findings are, you can't stop it happening. Still, next time you sit down with your broker, it's hard not to think" "yuck".