I n 1997, when Richard Peterson was a medical school student, he would play poker with a buddy who never seemed short of money. His friend was raking it in trading penny stocks. One day he showed up with a brand new Jeep in the driveway, evidence he was doing something right.
“He was just following rumours on the web,” Mr Peterson says, recounting his introduction into the world finance.
As the internet developed from the basic chat rooms of the late 1990s, Mr Peterson knew he wanted to do something with this idea of using social media to gain a market edge. After an 11-year career as a psychiatrist, he raised $1m from friends and colleagues to set up a hedge fund, and a further $750,000 to set up MarketPsych, the tech company behind it.