I’ve been listening to a lot of Allan Watts lately. He is largely accredited for bringing eastern philosophy into to western society in a highly digestible way. What I want to focus on is knowing without knowing.
As a trader we spend hours scanning charts, searching for the setups we know best, that we know have a high probability of reward. Though if it was that simple we would just automate what we do and sit at the beach all day. There is something more I believe.
There is a feeling that occurs, a knowing. You look at the chart and you know what it will do. As if you have some sort of pre-cognition. What is this? As if the stars have aligned and you somehow intuitively know. When your brain kicks in you may second guess yourself, change your mind, look for evidence to verify this feeling but you know what you know.
The mind, however wants to make up a story about why you feel this way. It is pointless. Just as fire does not burn itself, nor does a knife cut itself. You will not know what you know by logic, thought, or evidence. You just know…
How often do you feel this as a trader? What do you do when you have this feeling? Do you journal it? Do you always take the trade? Keeping track of these moments is critical in my success because there is a high order knowing I believe that I do not have access too directly. Perhaps over time with enough sample, I can begin to understand what I do know or at least plug it into a deep learning model 🙂