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Neuro Athletes, 

What does the human eye and making a good trade have in common? Speed. 

Last week I visited my clients on Wall Street, a Hedge Fund home to 70 portfolio managers (PM) and gave my monthly seminar. As I stood up on the floor with my big whiteboard explaining the nuances of decision making I realised that there really is no difference between a PM and an athlete.

Are the causes of Andy Murray’s success really that different to Warren Buffett’s?

Both are high-performers in their own fields; high achievers who are richly rewarded. Fans of both believe they are highly skilled at their chosen profession.

For athletes like Murray, his coaches have a wealth of data and performance statistics, which allow them to understand his physiology and focus on what can be done to gain that extra 1%.

When I think about the correlation between PMs and world class athletes I think of one thing: the ability to make sharp decisions.

Primer

An eye blink takes around 400 milliseconds and in that blink of an eye, 240,000 stocks are traded across 12 different stock exchanges and unfortunately, the majority of these stock trades aren’t even made by humans anymore.

Just to give you a sense of what microseconds are, it takes you 500,000 microseconds just to click a mouse, but if you're a Wall Street algorithm and you're five microseconds behind. You lose!

However…

The asset that you’re trading doesn’t matter. You can be trading stocks, futures, currencies or commodities and the only thing that matters is out performing the next guy to the front of the line. But what happens when you are competing with thousands if not, millions of others who are all generating speed at the same time as you?

Edward De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats reminds us to assess problems from as many perspectives as possible, in a collaborative manner which ultimately leads to better results but the best traders in the world know that outperforming the market requires speed, intelligence, intuition and endurance and they think like elite athletes.

In a world where machines are running the game and replacing jobs, the fight for that competitive edge is becoming more and more ruthless.

Make Better Decisions

What is the cost of one bad decision for you?

It takes approximately 2-3 hours for an average person to consume a scientific journal, 10-15 minutes to consume the latest news article, 3-10 seconds to read an average tweet and then we reach the limits of human decision making- 1000 milliseconds. The amount and quality of the decisions you make per day chews through your brains daily limit of fuel and if you aren’t feeding it correctly, if your quality of sleep isn’t at its peak and you aren’t training your brain to make better and faster decisions, then you will lose.

To a brain scientist, processing speed pretty much means the rate at which a human can take in a bit of new information, reach some judgment on it and then formulate an intelligent response. 

The primary reason for selling too soon or for misjudging a ball and kicking it to the offensive seems to be tied to a lack of attention. Even the most elite athletes and portfolio managers tend not to give their decisions enough attention, especially if that person feels stressed, under pressure to perform or has disrupted physiology.

Making good decisions depend on having a good performing brain. If you want to learn how to maximise on your own physiology then you want to sign up to my premium membership!

Warning Letters - Health Fraud

Be a smarter consumer and check with your physician before adding in (or taking anything out) of your diet. Here are this weeks FDA warning letters about products that are going viral on social media:

1. Nitrite “Poppers” - Ingesting or inhaling nitrite poppers can cause severe injury or death.

1. Natural Hope Herbals, LLCMARCS-CMS 612467 — JUNE 10, 2021

1. Jordan’s Crossing Herbal ConnectionsMARCS-CMS 616001 — JULY 20, 2021

If you have information you would like to share please contact me at [email protected]

What to Read

“Caffeine as a performance enhancing drug” (LINK)

Pharmaceutical companies are required by law to release details of their payments to a variety of doctors (LINK)

Joe Manchin is ghosting the west Virginia union workers whose jobs his daughter helped outsource (LINK)

Tweets of the Week

That’s it from me team, come and say hi to me on Twitter