Biological Determinism and Success in Finance

Hi All,

I've seen that very little has been discussed about the role of biology and early childhood neurological wiring (jointly categorized as biological determinism) on success in high finance.

I strongly feel that at the senior level (SVP/Principal+), the role solves for the individual with the most horsepower and social abilities, especially at top seats like Apollo.

Now, the need for high horsepower has been repeatedly discussed in this forum. However, not a lot has been said about what 'horsepower' really entails.

Horsepower, or the ability to work long hours at a high octane, is undoubtedly a product of your biology and early childhood development. Horsepower requires a naturally high dopaminergic individual with high prefrontal cortex activation and low levels of amygdala activation. This is typically formed during early childhood and is hard to rewire as an adult. Not everyone is blessed with this.

Additionally, these individuals are able to withstand high levels of stress.

Again, this has been discussed at length. But not much has been said about what "withstanding stress" means from a biological perspective. To withstand stress is to genetically have low cortisol levels. Even more important is to have lower cortisol sensitivity, meaning that your cortisol levels do not fluctuate when, for example, you are sleep-deprived or when you make a big mistake at work. On this last example, a lot of people are not able to recover from negative reviews and slip into a negative feedback loop.

On social ability, I grant skeptics that this is less biologically predisposed (although high GABA levels are heavily correlated with what people perceive as charisma according to some studies). But in any case, studies show that your social abilities rarely change after your brain fully develops. BDNF factors decrease and neuroplasticity diminishes; you become a creature of habit. At this point, drastic changes in your behavior take years, or even decades, to manifest.

The same goes for IQ and neuroplasticity; having an extremely flexible brain is very important for success. You need to be able to see different angles of a transaction. Also, there are a lot of "ambiguous signals" at work where a flexible mindset is required. Did your boss not say hi when he walked past you? Well, you should be able to have enough neuroplasticity to understand that maybe your boss is just having a bad day, instead of ruminating over a baseless assumption that he hates you.

Finally, biological flaws can be addressed through pharmaceutical interventions. Low testosterone, low dopaminergic signaling, high cortisol, and low BDNF (neuroplasticity marker) can be fought through having the right compounds and health advisors.

However, it is very surprising to me how most financemonkeys are heavily opposed to this. We are living in the 21st century, have life-changing medications at reasonable prices, and still, high-IQ, Ivy League monkeys keep preaching the "just eat healthy bro" mentality. It baffles me how these people really think that eating healthy will magically make you have the same horsepower as the top Apollo associate. These are the same people that will leave the industry after 4 years, citing the industry's horrible culture.

So please, keep on 'raw-dogging' this highly darwinistic environment while I optimize my performance under the supervision of top health advisors. Being dealt a bad hand won't stop me in this day and age.

Sidenote: be mindful of bad advice from successful senior people. Being successful does not imply being good at providing good advice. Put simply, a lot of these guys have the characteristics mentioned above plus a bit of luck. But when asked for advice, they will go off on tangents on how to achieve success without any real-life advice. "Just work harder" is frankly horrible advice when the person giving it was dealt better physiological cards.

Hope this helps.