:eek: Inandlong, that really was another masterfully tasteless contribution of yours! ~Scientist Moderator's edit: The remainder of this post can be found in the Trading Forum Announcements thread.
hey Scientist, Calm down will ya... LOL Inandlong is a very dear friend who was joking with me and teasing me that's all... There was no malice or illintent in his post. merely some fun. But thank you for being so galant and springing to my defence so readily... Kind regards Natalie
The subject of intuition is a very difficult one to discuss. "Intuitive Trading" is of the same nature as "Intuitive Mathematics" - I hasten to add that Trading is not Mathematics. For more than 100 years now, the literature has documented accurate observations of astounding mental capabilities displayed by rare individuals. So is a case of two brother psychopaths, interned since their early youth whose sole occupation was to exchange numbers with each other, day in day out. A mathematics professor discovered that these numbers constituted particular numerical series requiring unbelievable computational power to generate. Of course nobody ever got a clue of how they did this. What is usually discussed under trading are a set of techniques or ploys generally accessible and comprehensible to many, willing to work on it of course. "Intuition", although it can not be ruled out, belongs to esoteric or not understood phenomena. Especially in areas also including "random" features, accomplishments may be due to sheer luck rather than intuition. This element at least did not enter in the observation of the two brothers above. It may be better to move this thread elsewhere. nononsense
I think that we should realize the potential capability of the human brain. The total figure of binary processing power units is about 150,000,000,000^10,000. This number of the complexity of the human brain is a number higher than the total number of particles of matter in the known universe. Just try to visualize the number of atoms in the sun, the galaxy and then in the whole universe. This is the figure neuroscientists such as Rama Chandran simply name as the potential of processing power, which cannot and will not ever be outperformed by any computer built. It is derived from the approximate number of neurons in the brain to the power of 10,000, since the average neuron has connections to about 10,000 other neurons. Unfortunately, most people are not able to access this "hard drive", but only ever their small RAM, namely consciousness. Unless they're processing their subconsious in an alpha-state (dreaming), which is an exception - But a difficult state to perform in. There are some exceptions. Autistic children for example. There is a kid who knows by name, page, address and number every single entry in all of the entire phone directory of Beijing, that is about half a dozen major fat directory books, with several million entries. He can quote any of the entries by being given only one of the variables, i.e. location on which page, just phone number, or just address / name. Other similar marvels have been performed by autistic children, who are known to have a dysfunctional "RAM" while having a constant, 'streaming' access to their "HD". I wrote about his before, but it's always a thing to consider. How, under these circumstances or cerebral possibility, can we assume that a technical system can outperform the power of the human brain, as in trained proficiency, or "intuition"? I should mention here that myself, although I used systems for a long time, am not a systematic trader anymore. And I feel like a great restriction has been taken off me. Automation is good, but it isn't as powerful and adaptive as the brain can be. I.e. it can hardly trade superiorly during both trends and ranges. Only the human brain has this power of "on-the-go" evaluation and action. Hmm. Yes, I think "Intuition" partly belongs into the world of esoterics, or let's say there's a better explanation for learned proficiency than "Intuition". I have written something about that in another thread: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=319402&highlight=intuition#post319402[/color] I disagree. This is one of the most interesting points of diversion between traders. What's your reasoning to move this out of the trading forum? Scientist
Intuition is a gift. I was very intuitive until about 16 years old. When my math professor asked question I was always the first to answer whitout even thinking. It is when I really entered specialisation that little by little I lost this intuition. I regret since intuition is shortcut for thinking and allows you to get answer at speed light. My brother has remained rather intuitive although he has also followed an engineering school. Now intuition must be balanced by reason because if you only count on intuition you can derive to mysticism or at least to scientism (nononsense himself will agree with me about scientism ). And today my brain is functioning at the speed of a tortoise compared to before nevertheless like in the Lafontaine's story between the tortoise and the rabbit I am more sure to arrive at my goal by thinking slowly . As for the origin of intuition there are two parts: the genetic and the environment. My father for example was (because he was dead when I was young) a "genetic" genious : he was born in the poorest family of peasants and his parents has no education at all, nevertheless he achieved to be the first of the country exam in medecine to become a surgeon at the same time he was also a professor of nuclear physics and ... a very good violonist (unhappily I didn't like violin). I didn't inherit much from him genetically I above all inherited from my mother that's why I have a bad character . Now "genetic genious" apart environment above all education can play a role in bad or good sense. As in my case it played a bad role since I lost this intuition. In some sense it obliged me to compensate so I am always opened to new ideas or proved facts. Some people, like "genetic genious" seems to have paranormal intuition. I have met some persons personally that I can't suspect to be liars because I know them very well, although I have no explanation I admit the fact but I don't admit explanations given by the fantasies of gurus intuitions especially from sects which are obviously commercial exploitation of people misery not financial misery but spiritual misery since there are rich people in these sects. Even people one could think is intelligent goes to these sects : I guess it is because of their intuition so in that case intuition is dangerous. And in the case of trading I think intuition is also dangerous at least for most people. It is only when you get experience that some behavior will become automatic and you will say it is intuition, but what counts is that a path of learning has been necessary. Experience is great teacher, if going to normal school can be free, experience in trading can be very costfull especially in futures. So trying to trade by intuition without great experience is for me a dangerous idea. Of course you can count chance with your intuition that's a choice but it won't be mine personnally.
Harrytrader, As consolation listen to the wise words of Confucius: "Learning without thinking is labor lost; Thinking without learning is perilous." nononsense