The Psychology of Billions đź’°

Risk Management, Athletic Performance, Louisa Nicola

September 07, 2021

Welcome to The Neuro Athletics newsletter â€” your weekly source of human performance and health news. If you are new, you can join here. Please comment below with feedback on today’s newsletter.

Neuro Athletes, 

There is an old saying on Wall Street that the market is driven by just two emotions: fear and greed. I want to add another - uncertainty. Fear, Greed, Uncertainty. Succumbing to these three traits are the biggest challenge that most people wanting ultimate success possess.

Fear is what stops us from making the hard decisions. It’s called F.O.M.O

Greed pushes us to make the wrong decisions. At the end of the 20th century, extreme greed fueled a bubble.

Uncertainty is a lack of confidence in our decisions. Investors face an uncertain economic future fraught with danger, risk, and false optimism. 

I have seen this time and time again in both athletic and the financial space. To date, there are roughly 2,755 billionaires in the world and about 3 billion people who want to be one. Whether it be from winning the NBA playoffs to trading on Wall Street. The three traits listed above are what separates the 2,755 from the 3 billion.

Sadly, 2021 has brought more misinformation and uncertainty than any other year. We’re in this unpredictable bubble. What happens when we’re in an unpredictable bubble?

Robert Schiller, the 2013 Nobel Prize-winning economist, says we’re in a unique scenario: “The Everything Bubble,” where all asset classes have reached bubble status.

“I define a bubble as a social epidemic that involves extravagant expectations for the future,”

“But I’m not sure that the current situation is a classic bubble … The current environment may be driven more by fear than by a sense of a new era.”

Neurology and Risk Management

A study in the Journal of Neuroscience suggests brain activity may be a better predictor of stock price changes than prior market trends, or the actual stocks people decide to invest in. Part of Neuro Athletics is brain scanning our clients and figuring out what is happening in their brain so we can better optimise their programming to achieving better results. With that said, I spoke with and interviewed Luis Sanchez on the importance of having a clear and focused mind when it comes to investing. As with scientific experience, I also do field experience which means I engage with investors regularly to understand how neurology ties in with their investing decisions.

“My personal edge is an analytical edge. I’m really really good at studying an industry and thinking long term about it”

Neurology and Athletic Performance

I spoke with Jonathan Marcus about neuroscience in the realm of athletic performance. Why he believes coaches are entirely undervaluing the importance of brain health.

“That hub is always going to come back to the brain in terms of processing, understanding, interpreting and reacting to the environment”

Interview with Pseudonymous Writer Liberty

I really love this short interview I did with Liberty who writes a newsletter on all things finance, tech and even healthcare. I loved understanding his psychology behind his day to day decisions and work environment.

Q.  How important is having a clear mind as an investor.

This almost feels like a trick question, because in a very real way, nothing else really matters.

The way to succeed over long periods as an investor is through the quality of our thinking and decision-making.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that we're doing very complex things compared to what is going on at the theoretical physics or math department of the closest university, but simple doesn't always mean easy, and in the end, like in poker or any other probabilistic activity with incomplete information, having a clear mind and making the best decisions that we can is what makes a difference between winning and losing over the long-term (over the short-term, luck matters a lot, but over years and decades, skill emerges).

I also believe that for knowledge workers in general, there's very little that is systematized when it comes to reaching and keeping that "clear mind" state.

Athletes know how to train, and are always looking to improve their training regimens, but "professional thinkers" and "symbol manipulators" tend to mostly be on their own and do things in whatever way they stumble upon.

Some will try to incorporate advice they hear along the way, but it's still very much the wild west out there, with too many people who are constantly distracted, slaves to their email inboxes, watching TV from the corner of their eyes, scrolling a badly curated social media feed, between two meetings, while munching on refined carbs, without tracking anything... and then wonder what they could do to improve their performance.

Q: What happens to your decisions making and investment decisions when you sleep bad and don’t treat your body well?

I have two young boys, and they've thought me many great lessons about the importance of sleep since they were born.

It's now very clear to me that sleep is at the very foundation of everything else in life, and that if sleep goes wrong, everything else will go wrong at some point, especially if sleep is disturbed or of bad quality for long enough.

Decision-making suffers, mood and mental health suffers, memory consolidation goes away... what was I talking about? Oh yeah, willpower and discipline also goes down without sleep, so you start eating worse, exercising less, etc.

It can spiral out of control.

What's sad is that many people are chronically sleep-deprived and don't even remember what it feels like to be truly well-rested and operating at peak performance.

A lot of this is due to the common false belief that you can "bank" sleep, so you sleep too little 5-6 days a week and then "binge" on sleep 1-2 days a week. But my understanding is that it doesn't work that way, unfortunately. If you have a sleep deficit, you're going to pay for it one way or another.

So while kids made me lose control over a lot of my sleep, I decided that I'd try to optimize whatever % remained under my control.

So I got an Oura Ring wearable to better track my sleep and have a tighter feedback loop to judge if changes I made were improvements or not, I looked into sleep hygiene and tried to implement all the big recommendations, like having a very dark room, keeping it cooler, always going to bed at the same time, reducing/cutting alcohol consumption, no snacking before bed (that's a tough one! Can't say I'm great at it), going outside to be exposed to bright sunlight in the morning, reducing light in the evening, blue-blocking glasses, etc.

I think it has been a tremendous life-improvement and I recommend that others give it a try.

Who am I ?

We have a whole new cohort of individuals joining the Neuro Athletics community so I wanted to give a brief overview of who I am!

I was born and raised in Australia and grew up in a town called Newcastle. My parents and ancestors are immigrants from Cyprus which gave me the gift of being able to speak, read and write fluent Greek.

Fast forward a few years…

At the age of 18, the sport of Triathlon caught my eye and I was immediately hooked. I joined a triathlon team which later became my close friends and family. We trained two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening, seven days a week. This sport taught me everything I know today in terms of athletic performance, resiliency, strength, mental toughness, endurance and fortitude.

I fell in love with the aspect of racing and competing against myself. I made it my mission to become #1. I qualified for Beijing (2011) and Auckland (2012) world championships on the Australian team.

The College Experience

During my triathlon years I completed an undergraduate double degree in sport and exercise science/ teaching at the University of Newcastle.

This is where I learnt cell biology, was introduced to the sports science lab, I got to see and examine cadavers in the anatomy lab and found my love for medicine.

After graduating from this degree I immediately went into a Masters of Mathematics. This is where I learnt the true meaning of the quote:

“If everything beautiful is true and everything true is beautiful, then Mathematics must be the most beautiful thing in the world”

The Master's degree in mathematics encompasses the basic graduate curriculum in mathematics, and also offered me the opportunity to further learn

  • Real analysis

  • Complex analysis

  • Stochastic Calculus

  • Computational Algebra

  • Functional Analysis and Partial Differential Equations

  • Geometrical Methods in Number Theory

Medicine

After being introduced to human physiology in my first years of university and after tackling the mathematics field I entered the field of science and medicine at The University of Sydney. I finally felt at home.

I majored in Neurophysiology - Intraoperative Neurophysiology- which is the monitoring techniques that assess the function of the brain, brainstem, spinal cord, cranial nerves, and peripheral nerves during a procedure.

Monitoring the state of the nervous system in “real-time” during surgery alerts surgeons of potential evolving neurologic injury and may allow for corrective actions to be implemented to prevent permanent deficits, thus improving safety and surgical outcomes. 

When I completed this and did my internships and training I decided to combine the field of neurophysiology and athletic performance. In 2016 I saw a gap in the athletic space in terms of deep neuroscience and elite athletic performance.

Neuro Athletics

Neuro Athletics is a boutique multi-enterprise venture of Louisa Nicola. Under the brand umbrella of Neuro Athletics, there are two distinct groups: a consulting practice and a portfolio of digital products. Both of these groups are supported by a research team composed of research analysts in the field of neuroscience, health and life sciences.

I help elite athletes perform better, think faster and live longer. From doing brain scans, cognitive assessments and mental programming I am their one stop shop for all of their needs from the neck up!

Neuro Athletics has expanded into the finance space and we now work with a number of hedge fund managers to enhance decision making to increase their bottom line.

This was a short introduction into my world but I hope it gives you an insight into who I am, my brand and my mission.

I would love to know each and everyone of you so please leave a comment introducing yourselves.

Tweets of the week

The Neuro Athletics Newsletter

This newsletter is a way for me to engage with the community- all 30,000 of you but also give you access to my knowledge and experience. With the premium membership you will gain access to me once a month through a live webinar where I will answer questions you have on mental performance and all things brain health related.

You will also get a well-researched and in-depth manuscript that focuses on the latest studies in neuroscience we found most interesting, with notes, comments and related links.

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