fMRI data supporting the study entitled: Brain activity of professional investors signals future stock performance

<b>Abstract:</b>From April 2019 to February 2020, we used fMRI to collect brain response data of professional investors, while they processed 45 complex real-world investment cases and had to predict long-term stock performance. We then assessed whether the information they processed (stock metric data), their predictions and their brain responses would relate to future performance on the stock market. We report data of 34 participants (two participants were excluded from the study due to excessive head movement during fMRI scanning). The results of our study reveal that professional investors fail to accurately predict long-term stock performance. However, while processing complex information pertaining to investment cases, brain activity in a region associated with reward anticipation was increased for stocks that would end up overperforming in the future market. Remarkably, this effect held after controlling for the stock information (stock metric data) presented in the investment cases. Our findings add to recent work in ‘neuroforecasting’, demonstrating that market behavior can be forecasted by brain activity of a small sample, here of professional investors. The findings of this study are presented in the paper "Brain activity of professional investors signals future stock performance" published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).**摘要：** 2019年4月至2020年2月期间，我们采用功能磁共振成像（fMRI）采集专业投资者的脑响应数据，受试者需处理45个复杂的真实投资案例，并对股票的长期业绩进行预测。随后，我们评估了受试者所处理的信息（股票指标数据）、其作出的预测以及脑响应是否与股票市场的未来表现相关联。本研究共纳入34名受试者（2名受试者因fMRI扫描期间头部运动幅度过大被排除）。 研究结果显示，专业投资者无法精准预测股票的长期业绩。然而，在处理与投资案例相关的复杂信息时，针对未来市场表现更优的股票，受试者大脑中与奖赏预期相关的脑区活动显著增强。值得注意的是，在控制投资案例中呈现的股票指标数据这一变量后，该效应依然成立。 我们的研究结果补充了当前“神经预测”领域的最新研究成果，证实通过小样本（本研究样本为专业投资者）的脑活动数据即可预测市场行为。本研究的相关成果已发表于《美国国家科学院院刊》（Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences，PNAS），论文标题为《专业投资者的脑活动可预示未来股票业绩》（"Brain activity of professional investors signals future stock performance"）。