Polly Want Some Stock Advice?

Either this particular parrot is no bird brain or playing the stock market really is as easy as duck soup.

A parrot from Papua New Guinea finished third in a six-week South Korean stock-picking contest.

Like the other 10 investors in the contest Ddalgi (the name means "Strawberry" in Korean) started with a cyberpot of 60 million South Korean won ($48,380). According to Paxnet, the stock info provider that ran the contest, each transaction had to be worth 10 million won.

The human competitors chose stocks in their usual way but Ddalgi used his beak to pick up balls that represented 30 blue-chip stocks. Among the choices: Samsung Electronics.

"The outcome of our contest was amazing. Ddalgi stood third with her investment return standing at 13.7 percent," Paxnet general manager Chung Yeon-Dae told Agence France Press. The contest was designed, in part, to show that investing in blue-chip stocks is safe.

The human investors averaged 190 trades over the six-week period, but the parrot got just seven chances to make a move.

No word on how many crackers Ddalgi got as a reward — or whether or not he’s proud as a peacock.

Photo courtesy of Martin Pettit, via Flickr.