In this excerpt from a broader “Real Conversations” interview with Hedgeye CEO Keith McCullough, Dr. Richard Peterson explains how “fear” filters into his mathematical model (“fear for a biotech stock is good, but fear for American Airlines is bad”) and how the algorithm helped his firm successfully trade fade Brexit groupthink. McCullough and Peterson also discuss their constant struggle to override their own biases.

Dr. Richard Peterson, a board-certified psychiatrist and CEO of MarketPsych, is among the foremost leaders in the area of applied behavioral finance. His team has developed an algorithm that crunches data from more than 2,000 media outlets and 800 social media sites to interpret investor sentiment and suggest trading opportunities. Based on that data, they put together a market-neutral social media-based hedge fund that beat the S&P 500 by more than twenty-four percent—through the 2008 financial crisis.

Want more?

Watch this edition of “Real Conversations” in its entirety below.