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

Abstract:
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：
本研究于2019年4月至2020年2月期间，采用功能磁共振成像（fMRI）采集专业投资者的脑响应数据，实验过程中受试者需处理45个真实复杂投资案例，并对股票的长期表现作出预测。随后，本研究评估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存在关联。本研究共纳入34名参与者，其中2名因fMRI扫描期间头部运动幅度过大被排除出实验。

研究结果显示，专业投资者无法准确预测股票的长期表现。然而，在处理与投资案例相关的复杂信息时，对于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会显著增强。值得注意的是，在控制投资案例中呈现的股票信息（股票指标数据）后，该效应依然成立。本研究结果补充了“神经预测（neuroforecasting）”领域的近期研究成果，证明通过少量样本（本次样本为专业投资者）的脑活动即可预测市场行为。

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）》的论文《专业投资者的脑活动可预示未来股票表现》（Brain activity of professional investors signals future stock performance）中。