I’m looking forward to my upcoming talk at this conference for institutional traders, although the focus of the conference is quant/algo centered – HFT & dark pool routing are the main topics discussed – they’ve asked me to talk about intuition. Strange? Not really.

Here’s the description of my talk on the conference brochure:

It’s generally not discussed, and certainly not publicly reported this way, but when it comes right down to it, many top performing traders and money managers know their intuition is the reason for their superior performance. Historically, the nature of intuition is seen as elusive at best, and behavioral finance research tells us to be wary of System 1 thinking. However, new research from neuroscience and psychology focusing on decision-making under uncertainty combined with qualitative evidence from hundreds of interviews with traders and money managers reveals a different story. In this highly unique and informative session, you’ll learn about:

  • How our subconscious influences our trading decisions
  • The role of emotions relative to perception and judgment
  • Surprising research findings that show a unique way to predict markets
  • Understanding the difference between intuition and impulse

One of the things I’ll be talking about is that as the algos seem to taking over many markets, humans are still better at pattern recognition in open systems. My conversations with AI experts confirms this. And I’m using the generally accepted definition of intuition as implicit learning and pattern recognition.

In my experience as a trader and what I’ve seen with other traders is in a market dominated by algos battling other algos, and HFTs,  as strange as this sounds, intuition is even more of a competitive advantage for the discretionary trader.

If you want to develop your intuition, consider my Advanced Course, designed to get to you the next level in your trading. It is ‘heavy duty’ trading psychology with a lot of actionable steps to improve your performance. It’s for  traders who are serious about improving. And if you haven’t already, sign up for my free email newsletter that gives you professional trading psychology tips.