Consciousness and Intuition

I read an interesting piece by Sebastian Siegel recently that while it seems a bit contrived in its poetry and somewhat meandering in its structure did have a couple things to say about Consciousness and Intuition that I thought were intriguing.  He says, “Intuition is the pull of something beyond you, deeper than you, subtle potentiality of second sight, telling you where you ought to go – your propensity, your density, your soul.  Courage is the sure hand by which the potential that is intuited can be believed in without knowing the complete path of its manifestation.  Living is the engagement of life, awareness of and response to that call.  And even more, it is the requisite for pulse and music.  And this rhythm is the ultimate apothecary for the transcendence of loss and loneliness, and the ticket to eternity.”

What I like about this particular segment of the article is that it speaks to my personal belief about purpose and the interconnectedness of life.  It makes me look hard at my own definition of intuition and while it makes sense to me in the non-tangible ways I live I had to ask myself, “is there a place for it in the tangible ways I live?”  Like..oh…say….trading?

I do believe that there is a place for consciousness in everything we do.  For me that means that throughout my day I am mindful of each decision and purposeful in my direction.  I don’t always get it right and there are plenty of times that I feel overwhelmed or worn out and I realize that it has been several hours since I’ve been truly conscious in my choices.  My goal, however, is to increase the times that I act on purpose (even if that means I realize I need a break) and decrease the times that I’m on auto-pilot.  Given that definition, it stands to reason that consciousness has the most important place in my trading.  It really is as simple as asking the question, “Why am I doing/not doing [insert action]?”  That action could be backtesting, journaling or taking the trade itself.  There are times that I’m just sick to death of the charts, I’m not going to be worth a darn in my backtesting, but if I’m conscious of that then I’ll know that is a great time to journal about why I’m sick to death of the charts and recognize if there is any other impetus to my recalcitrance. Usually, there is and I can identify exactly what I need to get back on track.  So, for me, there is no question at all that consciousness belongs in our trading…or any undertaking, for that matter.

But what about intuition?

Is there ever a time when we should rely on something as subjective as intuition in our trading (or other parts of our lives for that matter)?

If intuition is, as Mr. Siegel defines it, “the pull of something beyond you, deeper than you, a subtle potentiality of second sight telling you where you ought to go…” then can it even be applied to something like trading where the primary ambition is to earn you money which seems to be something so obviously outside of yourself?

I have certainly had times that I’ve felt extremely intuitive about the charts and I’ve had quite the opposite experience as well.  So, is there any merit there at all?

I do believe that there is an inherent, almost immeasurable, learning that happens over time that we may not even be aware of.  I see it in students all the time.  Run any backtesting session for more than 200 trades and you’ll see, as you go, that your results get better and better even though you’ve tried hard to stick to the original rules of the system you’re testing.  There are teeny tiny elements in price action that you’re responding to that you weren’t in the beginning.  You’re beginning to ‘feel’ price movement and ‘sense’ the trend tiring.  If someone were to ask you why you took this trade but passed on that other one you may not even be able to put it into words and once you’re back into the ‘reasoning’ side of your brain you wonder, yourself, why you didn’t take it and begin to second guess your behavior.  Is that developing intuition or merely learning on a deeper level?

I’m willing to argue that it could be a little bit of both.  It makes sense to me that as we embed our learning deeper and deeper into our psyches we also tap into previously untapped areas of our brain as well as Universal Consciousness.  Maybe you’re not with me on the latter half of that, but certainly the former half bears its own credibility.  Couldn’t reaching into the depths of our own mental makeup be classified as intuition that has been developed through conscious practice and still follow Siegel’s model of being “something beyond you [logic], deeper than you [reasoning]…”?

It would be a dangerous line to walk, in my opinion, to assume that we’re somehow gifted with some kind of nebulous insight that just makes trading easy. However, it feels right to me to that both consciousness and intuition have their place in every facet of life, and I hold strong in my belief that the consciousness that drives us to be purposeful and dedicated in our craft is what develops our intuition.

That’s what makes sense to me, but how about you?  Is there a place for consciousness and intuition in a person’s trading?  If not, what do you think replaces that?  If so, how do you define it?

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