Cognitive Enhancement on Wall Street

• authors Peter Rothman

Bloomberg news reports that Sang Lucci Capital Partners are examining the use of a nootropic or chemical cognitive enhancement to improve financial trading performance.  According to Bloomberg, “As part of a study, the traders took a supplement meant to improve cognitive acuteness while buying and selling options and stocks on a simulated platform. All the while a quantitative electroencephalography, or EEG, recorded electrical activity in their brains. A company called TruBrain Inc. ran the tests to see how their pill works on the mind of a trader.”

TruBrain’s pill is reportedly predominantly composed of piracetam, a substance which is familiar to many H+ readers interested in this area. The full list of ingredients in the TruBrain “blend” is available here. This seems like a fairly straight forward test of a well known nootropic with supporting nutrients on a pretty interesting real world problem.

Specifics about performance are unfortunately a bit hard to come by at this stage. Bloomberg reports, “The Sang Lucci employees and other traders recruited by the firm, wearing EEG electrodes, went through two 90-minute sessions of simulated buying and selling and underwent follow-up questioning during the week of April 21. Each took TruBrain before one session and a placebo before the other. While the trades were simulated, Bathgate said the participants’ intensity was for real.”

But Sang Lucci itself is a pretty interesting operation and despite its small size, the fund has created a buzz by posting daily profit and loss statements on Twitter for example. They have an extensive set of free educational videos on Youtube as well.

We at H+ can imagine Sang Lucci publishing the trader’s EEGs, nootropic blend employed and other relevant experimental data from ALL their traders. Yes, more please!