Unconscious Vs Conscious Competence

[zdo 20]

What about "luck"?

I have been using some software I purchased years ago to find my luck days each month, and it does seem to work.

 

... definitely part of the 'whole' game... and

... defintely a whole different topic from this one...

[zdo 20]

FXGirl,

 

Here’s one just for you

 

cryptogon.com » Military Researchers Zapping Brains to Make Better Snipers

 

 

:haha: ... and what the heck are you doing in Canoga Park ?

[jaysmith124 10]

I write down what I intuitively see but often it is in front of me and I no longer see it... My conscious brain has overridden the intuitive..

 

Somehow they need to co-exist but they often don't...

 

Any of you have this conflict and if so how have you successfully or unsuccessfully tried to manage it..?

 

Thanks for your time and consideration..this might require some "thought."

 

Your certainly not alone. Here is a article that covers this area. Getting to what is interfering with your intuition takes careful look into your relationships, and connectedness with ourselves, others, our environment, money, and sex. Our behavior is motivated, or controlled, by our core beliefs in these areas. Values, Morals, and Beliefs are expressed on an emotional level in life, and in our trading. The results we get reflect our mental patterns.

 

Look for emotions you don't like, or would rather have if you had your way. What emotions you want. Is this an appropriate way to fulfill this emotional need? What area in life have you steered away from, and have accepted to live with, or without? Does this behavior, and (in)activity, have the same belief, and emotion, that prevents you from trading like you know you could? If so, it would be easier,(if not the only way) to change the beliefs and feelings in this part of your life, first. The overall purpose, I believe, is for us to find and use the power of our unconscious mind.

[laurus12 10]

.....

 

I write down what I intuitively see but often it is in front of me and I no longer see it... My conscious brain has overridden the intuitive..

 

Somehow they need to co-exist but they often don't...

 

Any of you have this conflict and if so how have you successfully or unsuccessfully tried to manage it..?

 

Thanks for your time and consideration..this might require some "thought."

 

Hello Tom,

 

I've been away for some time now and notice that there are some posting that I should be responding to, so I have to get back to that. Just so people know that I do not ignore them.

 

Back to the quote. I reread your text in the quote in the last post by Jay and would like to share some more of my experiences regarding this.

 

To first rephrase my self; In my experience intuition vs. left brain analysis is very much based on in which phase I am in relation to how far I have come in learning something new. For me personally it is clear that if I am very focused on new analysis stuff, there is no room for intuition. The left brain takes completely over. Unfortunately this also affects the parts which works very well from the intuitive side, and it takes some time to get tuned in again, but in the perspective of that everything has its phases this is something that I have come to accept. Another situation where intuition is gone is if I am emotionally unstable and mentally in bad shape where I have the negative kind of approach to trading. Previously in the extreme it could become like "I am #@%##!!! gonna get this market today...". It then became "I" who was going to "take care of this shi...". If you see what I mean. With my experience I have good experiences with being positively energetic in my trading. I am then putting effort into recognizing what my "gut" is telling me, but with negative energy, as in frustration and lack of self confidence, it seems clear that the controlling aspect with this obliterates all room for intuition.

 

Laurus

[laurus12 10]

By the way Tom. If I understood correctly you ordered "The Eye Never Sleeps". How is it going? What do you think?

 

Laurus

[roztom 10]

By the way Tom. If I understood correctly you ordered "The Eye Never Sleeps". How is it going? What do you think?

 

Laurus

 

I ordered it and also Trading by the Gut... They are sitting here is the shipping box - unopened...

 

I am hoping to get to them soon.. unfortunately between trading and having my Victorian Home rehabbed (Nightmare on Elm St) I have my hands full.

 

It is amazing the things that can influence trading... I have to "clear my head" before trading...

 

If I'm not successful I cannot connect with the market - it becomes distorted.

 

When I'm in the flow it is easy, when I'm not - I find out after a few trades... :doh:

 

I am looking forward to exploring this further..thanks for sharing your insights.

[laurus12 10]

Good to hear . In my opinion Trading by the Gut is a clear and easy to understand book. What I like about my trading psychology books is that they cover different aspects and at the same time on certain areas complement each other. Regarding The Eye Never Sleeps I have come to love it. It has really made an impression on me. To me this is the kind of book which I am going to reread many times.

 

Some days ago I found five interviews with Mr. Rande Howell at MoneyShow.com on YouTube. I think what he says goes pretty well hand in hand with the books discussed. I am quite impressed by the clarity and how tangible the information is.

 

The links are:

1. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0vuAzE5ICE]Mastering Uncertainty in Trading - YouTube[/ame]

2. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2gWWSIfIIk]Steps for Managing Emotions When Trading the Markets - YouTube[/ame]

3. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO2VVcozyfI]Achieving Confidence in Trading - YouTube[/ame]

4. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_l8YjefmKw]Achieving Your Potential in Trading - YouTube[/ame]

5. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ5BvhGLSRw]Breaking Through to the Next Level - YouTube[/ame]

 

Regarding Nightmare on Elm St. I know, sometimes it just becomes too much.

 

Best regards,

Laurus

 

Edit: Okay. I did not know that the movies would appear right here in my post taking all this space. If kind of too invasive I'll try to post the links in another way.

Edited April 29, 2012 by laurus12

[tradelab 10]

Learners or trainees tend to begin at stage 1 - 'unconscious incompetence'.

 

They pass through stage 2 - 'conscious incompetence', then through stage 3 - 'conscious competence'.

 

And ideally end at stage 4 - 'unconscious competence'.

 

Perhaps the simplest illustration of importance of appreciating the need for staged learning is that teachers and trainers can wrongly assume trainees to be at stage 2, and focus effort towards achieving stage 3, when often trainees are still at stage 1. Here the trainer assumes the trainee is aware of the skill existence, nature, relevance, deficiency, and that there will be a benefit from acquiring the new skill. Whereas trainees at stage 1 - unconscious incompetence - have none of these things in place, and will not be able to address achieving conscious competence until they've become consciously and fully aware of their own incompetence. This is a fundamental reason for the failure of a lot of training and teaching.

 

If the awareness of skill and deficiency is low or non-existent - ie., the learner is at the unconscious incompetence stage - the trainee or learner will simply not see the need for learning. It's essential to establish awareness of a weakness or training need (conscious incompetence) prior to attempting to impart or arrange training or skills necessary to move trainees from stage 2 to 3. People only respond to training when they are aware of their own need for it, and the personal benefit they will derive from achieving it.

[Rande Howell 10]

Good to hear . In my opinion Trading by the Gut is a clear and easy to understand book. What I like about my trading psychology books is that they cover different aspects and at the same time on certain areas complement each other. Regarding The Eye Never Sleeps I have come to love it. It has really made an impression on me. To me this is the kind of book which I am going to reread many times.

 

Some days ago I found five interviews with Mr. Rande Howell at MoneyShow.com on YouTube. I think what he says goes pretty well hand in hand with the books discussed. I am quite impressed by the clarity and how tangible the information is.

 

The links are:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

 

Regarding Nightmare on Elm St. I know, sometimes it just becomes too much.

 

Best regards,

Laurus

 

Edit: Okay. I did not know that the movies would appear right here in my post taking all this space. If kind of too invasive I'll try to post the links in another way.

 

That's a surprise. If you go to u-tube and type in Rande Howell, you'll find about 35 more videos on Trader Psychology over the years. They are not as coat and tie as the Money Show ones.

 

Rande Howell

[Rande Howell 10]

Learners or trainees tend to begin at stage 1 - 'unconscious incompetence'.

 

They pass through stage 2 - 'conscious incompetence', then through stage 3 - 'conscious competence'.

 

And ideally end at stage 4 - 'unconscious competence'.

 

Perhaps the simplest illustration of importance of appreciating the need for staged learning is that teachers and trainers can wrongly assume trainees to be at stage 2, and focus effort towards achieving stage 3, when often trainees are still at stage 1. Here the trainer assumes the trainee is aware of the skill existence, nature, relevance, deficiency, and that there will be a benefit from acquiring the new skill. Whereas trainees at stage 1 - unconscious incompetence - have none of these things in place, and will not be able to address achieving conscious competence until they've become consciously and fully aware of their own incompetence. This is a fundamental reason for the failure of a lot of training and teaching.

 

If the awareness of skill and deficiency is low or non-existent - ie., the learner is at the unconscious incompetence stage - the trainee or learner will simply not see the need for learning. It's essential to establish awareness of a weakness or training need (conscious incompetence) prior to attempting to impart or arrange training or skills necessary to move trainees from stage 2 to 3. People only respond to training when they are aware of their own need for it, and the personal benefit they will derive from achieving it.

 

Personally, I find the biggest gap to competence in trading is the movement from a deterministic mindset to a probability based mindset. It's huge and difficult to make that shift.

Rande Howell

[flowzen 10]

Floor traders (I used to be one) react a lot to the noise, plus the difference of being on a floor was that you got to make the most of any inefficiencies, you generally saw everything and how/who exactly was buying/selling.... among other things, so even though instincts were built from that environment, they could still be explained by certain things.

 

I guess the point is instinct to be trusted has to have a basis for it. AND

Even experience to be considered worthwhile needs to be shown to be worthwhile.

 

(I am always remember that great old thing I am sure we have all had said to us, and maybe some of us are at that stage we say it to others ....it goes along the line of....." I've been driving for 20/30/40 years young man and I know how its done." when in actual fact it might have been better said "I have been driving badly for all those years and never really proved that my driving was any good")

 

The program I mentioned was from the BBC Horizon series - I could not see it on their site though. the basis for this one little section in the program was this.....

 

Military personnel often have to scan satellite pictures of earth looking for building etc; of interest. This is difficult with large areas. So what these scientists did was chop each large image up into smaller sections, and then they showed the subject an image similar to what they were meant to be looking for (the test image). eg; a building in a desert. At the same time they registered the pattern the brain registered when this test image was seen and studied.

The next step was to rapidly show the larger image broken into much smaller segments, and to record which smaller images registered in the brain with the same scan as the test image. Far faster than we could recognise them, the brain picked it up and recorded the scan and registered it to the image. They then showed the larger image with the registered hotspots for closer inspection.

The scanning this way improved both the time taken to scan images and the accuracy by (from memory) 300%.

Fascinating stuff.....I was thinking of asking the university professors for some equipment

 

Its what many of us do every day anyway, and computer scans as they stand only provide some of the picture, its this little hidden part that it seems you are trying to capture.

Either way the rationale is there, we just need to be able to quantify it.

 

I just realized something from reading your post. During the times of the pits, when traders were crowded shoulder to shoulder, physiology plays as much a part of market movement as do technicals. Humans being intelligent pack animals, we have the same ability to pick up on moods on those around us as do wolves/other pack/herd animals. A lot of this is based upon facial expression-but one thing we often overlook is SMELL. Many soldiers who have been in combat can tell you that Fear has a smell-and that it is contagious. We also look to certain individuals over others for cues because we(consciously or unconsciously)recognize alpha mentalities. So imagine what happens on the trading floor when just one strong personality has a shot of fear so intense that it literally "infects" those around him(through smell and sight)-I imagine its almost an involuntary herd reflex that causes those market crashes. And I wonder if moving away from trading pits is going to reduce the number of market crashes...

[Rande Howell 10]

This is really a reply to SIUYA's comments about the military.

 

There is a good book :HOW WE KNOW that directs itself toward seeing how instinctual intuition and reason can work together in decision making under pressure. Intuition is defined as unconscious pattern recognition that operating outside of knowledge derived by reason Well anyway, that's the way I define it in my work.

 

In combat situations often there is no time to deliberate about decisions. Gut instinct has been found to fill in the gaps that reason can't get at. And they teach intuition as part of decision making. It is this knowing without knowing how you know. I study the military because of their interest in peak performance under the stress of the battlefield and they have a lot of money and very smart minds to produce performance under pressure. Much better than most of the academic research.

 

Traders are taught to use reason and logic as their guides in decision making -- and leave emotion out of the picture -- which BTW is impossible to do. Yet, when you get around really skillful traders, you will find that they typically use gut instinct or intuition as part of their calculus of decision making. Very few things in trading are clear cut black and white knowledge that reason, alone, can work well.. It is in this grey ambiguity that skillful traders use intuition to fill in. It's not guessing. It is instinctual problem solving that by passes logic. Same thing the US military is teaching these days.

 

There are a couple of professional traders I work with who teach a very logic based decision making process. Just what you would expect. Yet, in their trading rules under the pressure of living trading, they drive their students nuts when they take trades that don't follow the rules that the students know. The expert trader retorts that they are following the rules. In hindsight, they are. In the moment to the untrained eye, they aren't.

 

Instead of turning a blind eye toward intuition, they are learned how to incorporate it into their very successful decision making. Unfortunately for floor traders becoming screen traders, the gut instincts that they learned on the floor are useless when they can't feel the emotions of decision makers around them. To be successful, they have to relearn how to use their intuition in a different domain.

 

Reason and instinct really need to be taught how to work together in a trader's mind. The video and article I'm preparing for April addresses this gap in understanding trader's mind. The problem is that reason appears to be reasonable until it is put to the test. Then you find that it is slave to emotion. Without really learning how to work with your instinctual emotional nature, traders typically trade with half a brain and limited capacity to act under conditions of uncertainty.

 

SIUYA -- I am going to be speaking in Brisbane and the Gold Coast in May at the national conference for the Australian Technical Analysis Association. I will also be in Sydney for a few days following the conference. Are you in any of those locations?

 

Rande Howell

[SIUYA 11]

-I imagine its almost an involuntary herd reflex that causes those market crashes. And I wonder if moving away from trading pits is going to reduce the number of market crashes...

 

I dont know about smell idea except the 'he just shit/pissed himself" or the "I am going to retch in a bucket"......but it probably has some creedence.

However given we generally use our sight and gut reaction first it might have just been a fart.

 

As to reducing the amount of crashes.....nope.

computers might not smell or hear fear but they certainly react. ala.....2008, flash crash etc;

more they change the more they stay the same.

[SIUYA 11]

SIUYA -- I am going to be speaking in Brisbane and the Gold Coast in May at the national conference for the Australian Technical Analysis Association. I will also be in Sydney for a few days following the conference. Are you in any of those locations?

 

Rande Howell

 

No - I am living in Europe now. (worlds greatest feminist - moved for my wifes job)

Sorry to have missed you it would be good to meet in person....show you the harbour and go for a cold refreshing ale. If you like walks and have the time - I recommend Bondi to Bronte..something I miss.

 

Re books, it sounds similar to something I have just re read "the righteous mind: Why good people are divided...." by Haidt. Talks about the elephant/rider = emotion/reason divide. (but more a focus on 'morals'..... a good reminder.

As I get older I get more contemplative as well as cynical. but its all related.,,,and back on topic it does make you understand why one person can feel bullish and the other bearish even when looking at the same thing.....gut feel maybe and then we apply reason.

[wmck6167 10]

Wells, there are a lot of wisdoms I can dig out in this thread. Reasoning and logics (rationality) may still belong to expectation category when compared to reactive mental state. I always wonder whether R&L can be thrived in interactive system eventually.

If you love the game, then fundamentally reasoning and logics might not be supportable from the very beginning since "love" can not be reasoning and be logical... Am I right?

Cheers.:missy: