I think success may all be quantitative, but people just don't realize it. I propose that those who seem to trade by so-called intuition are relying on their past experience, some indicators, or a combination of such things to make decisions. I think they simply don't realize what they do. I believe this is why so many books about trading are rubbish or at least noninformative. Many successful traders simply cannot explain what they do. It's second nature to them. I believe some people can arrive at a system by experimentation without the usual backtesting and rigorous skills it requires (I'm definitely not one of them). However, those who "feel" their way into something may be using the same skills unconsciously. Think about the last time you had a bad feeling about someone--you did not trust them, maybe for no identifiable reason. I submit that you did have a good reason: something in their speech patterns, body language, or choice of words tapped into your experience and notified your unconscious mind that you have seen this before, and it did not end well. If you tried to bring all that experience into conscious thought, you probably would not be able to do it. But there is this lifelong synthesis and judgment buried there, and you use it all the time.
"Feel" or "intuition" is probably just another way to describe someone who is able to very cerebrally interpret quantitative data such as price or price bars.
@drcha : Is there some type of activity in your life where you just "know" what to do, even though you have no basis in fact or experience that you know of (consciously)? And when you follow this "inner voice", it usually turns alright or just as it should, even though you had no way of knowing for sure, or didn't need to "think it through". Intuition is not decoupled from experience, logic, reason. In fact, you should always check sparks of ideas and unknown knowledge against it. So this is how it works, although exactly how it works is very fuzzy, individual and heavily dependent on everything else in and around you. It's sort of like a flow. If you try to reason about everything in life, you lose it (the connection) and easily get lost. We cannot possibly analyse every life-decision, what makes us happy are of unknown quantification. Both because we haven't already had our future happiness, but also because there's no happiness in the past or the future - only in the present. So the last choice is always to live life fully and embrace all of it. Everything can't be explained and measured, because the whole has more value than any simple sum of its parts. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/19/the-habits-of-highly-intu_n_4958778.html
In his book "Trading for a Living" Dr. Alexander Elder says this is possible and suggests starting point of charting manually....
If you've ever played competitive sports, there's always a few guys on the team that are just "naturals" at it without ever playing the game before. Thus, without any prior real experiences. Those athletes just have a good "feel" for the game but they still gotta train and practice just like everybody else. In fact, some of the world's top athletes train to be intuitive on the playing field because them the ability to improvise and react faster in situations that was not something they had trained for or experience before. Yet, as Simples stated...everything can't be explained and measured.
Only thing I can feel is intense anger when I have traded out of the system and of course losses, it not always the losses I am pissed is I allowed myself to get caught into revenge trading. Thank goodness Mr. Market has disciplined me mountains of times to let me know that Mr. Market is smarter than I am and now just write down into my "Dumb Journal" the trade I wanted to take. Yes, I am happy that I have cried out loudly "Mr. Market, may I have another" in the past and now Mr. Market can go after others who are also screaming that phrase as well. "Please, let me have a winning trade and yes I will go to church and donate so much of my profits if I can turn it around,.....Pleeeeease" But Mr. Market knows so well that doubtful we remember......
Is it really possible to feel the markets? Feel = pick up on..., glean..., decipher Can one "feel" another's feelings / emotions / reason for acting a certain way / doing a certain thing Most times no doubt - also true for the mkt Once one detaches..., seeing another's modus operandi - all be it deliberate..., or emotions based - becomes possible..., exploitable..., profitable People are predisposed to herd mentality / habitual-ness RN