May 2024
A Dutch-Norwegian study on stock market predictions seems to indicate that the unconscious mind knows more about the future than does the conscious mind.
“Consistently forecasting the stock market remains notoriously difficult, if not entirely impossible”, the researchers state in the article published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA). “However, emerging evidence suggests that neural components of human choice behavior may in fact facilitate forecasting of market-level behavior.”
The sample of investors in the study were not able to consciously successfully predict the performance of stocks in a number of investment cases — but one part of their brain (nucleus accumbens) registered higher activity for investment cases that ended up overperforming. The nucleus accumbens is a brain structure below the cerebral cortex considered to be the neural interface between motivation and action. Functional MRI was used to monitor brain activity.
“Cross-validated prediction analysis indicated that [nucleus accumbens] activity could significantly predict future stock performance out-of-sample above chance. Our findings resonate with recent neuro-forecasting studies and suggest that brain activity of professional investors may help in forecasting future stock performance”, the study finds.
Neuroscientist Julia Mossbridge commented on the new findings:
“Among forecasters and foresight practitioners, the phrase ‘you can’t predict the future’ is used as a sort of reassuring mantra. Thing is, it’s true only if ‘you’ selectively excludes your unconscious mind.”
Anders Bolling
