The present article reviews some of the tenets of the Consolidated Model of Financial Predation (CMFP). The CMFP is used to explain how investors behave as either predators or prey in the financial markets, for example, during the 2008 predatory‐mortgages crisis. The article tests one of its key assumptions: that is, that people adopt different levels of prey positions. In the last four years, a number of articles have been published on the CMFP, which states that people adopt either a predator or a prey position (PPP), or else a mixture of both. The model has emerged as a result of a five‐year study and has found various applications, in particular, in the field of behavioural finance. According to this model, consumers of financial products tend to position themselves as either predators or prey. In the latter case, this causes them to judge the relationship in negative terms and to experience it as less rewarding, if not punishing altogether. This has two effects: first, perceived predation tends to gain in power and second, purchasing decisions may not be optimal. Results from an exploratory functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study aimed at generating prey positions in minimal stress conditions are presented; they show that there is a significant difference between at least two prey positions, labelled “known predator–prey position” (KPPP) and “unknown predator–prey position” (UPPP). This means that consumers of financial products could potentially face two levels of apprehension (perceived predation): a high one under uncertainty and a lower one when conditions are volatile. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.