Read the book, and update this post afterwards whether it addresses your happy condition!
Thanks for recommending me this book. It was on my list but I read it just after seeing your post.
And I must say that this book indeed describes partly what I experience sometimes.
Other times it is more as I called it a "deja vu moment". I think it's more like photographic memory.
I'm in the middle of "Reminiscences of a stock operator" by Edwin Lefevre and in one chapter it is explained, to some extent, where this "phenomenon" ,as you called it, comes from. It's also explained in the first couple of chapers of "Blink" of course.
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The training of a stock trader is like a medical education. The physician has to spend
long years learning anatomy, physiology, materia medica and collateral subjects by the
dozen. He learns the theory and then proceeds to devote his life to the practice. He
observes and classifies all sorts of pathological phenomena. He learns to diagnose. If his
diagnosis is correct and that depends upon the accuracy of his observation he ought to
do pretty well in his prognosis, always keeping in mind, of course, that human fallibility
and the utterly unforeseen will keep him from scoring 100 per cent of bull's-eyes. And
then, as he gains in experience, he learns not only to do the right thing but to do it
instantly, so that many people will think he does it instinctively. It really isn't
automatism. It is that he has diagnosed the case according to his observations of such
cases during a period of many years; and, naturally, after he has diagnosed it, he can
only treat it in the way that experience has taught him is the proper treatment. You can
transmit knowledge that is, your particular collection of card-indexed facts but not your
experience. A man may know what to do and lose money if he doesn't do it quickly
enough.
Observation, experience, memory and mathematics these are what the successful trader
must depend on. He must not only observe accurately but remember at all times what he
has observed. He cannot bet on the unreasonable or on the unexpected, however strong
his personal convictions may be about man's unreasonableness or however certain he
may feel that the unexpected happens very frequently. He must bet always on
probabilities that is, try to anticipate them. Years of practice at the game, of constant
study, of always remembering, enable the trader to act on the instant when the
unexpected happens as well as when the expected comes to pass.
A man can have great mathematical ability and an unusual power of accurate
observation and yet fail in speculation unless he also possesses the experience and the
memory. And then, like the physician who keeps up with the advances of science, the
wise trader never ceases to study general conditions, to keep track of developments
everywhere that are likely to affect or influence the course of the various markets. After
years at the game it becomes a habit to keep posted. He acts almost automatically. He
acquires the invaluable professional attitude and that enables him to beat the game at
times! This difference between the professional and the amateur or occasional trader
cannot be over emphasised. I find, for instance, that memory and mathematics help me
very much. Wall Street makes its money on a mathematical basis. I mean, it makes its
money by dealing with facts and figures.
When I said that a trader has to keep posted to the minute and that he must take a purely
professional attitude toward all markets and all developments, I merely meant to
emphasise again that hunches and the mysterious ticker-sense haven't so very much to
do with success. Of course, it often happens that an experienced trader acts so quickly
that he hasn't time to give all his reasons in advance but nevertheless they are good and
sufficient reasons, because they are based on facts collected by him in his years of
working and thinking and seeing things from the angle of the professional, to whom
everything that comes to his mill is grist.
Experience has taught me that the way a market behaves is an excellent guide for an
operator to follow. It is like taking a patient's temperature and pulse or noting the colour
of the eyeballs and the coating of the tongue.
I have found that experience is apt to be steady dividend payer in this game and that
observation gives you the best tips of all. The behaviour of a certain stock is all you need
at times. You observe it. Then experience shows you how to profit by variations from
the usual, that is, from the probable.
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Any advice and comments much appreciated
