Story Of Intuition

You’ve probably heard advice like “trade with intuition” - but what does that actually mean at its core? Technical analysis can be learned fairly quickly: charts, patterns, indicators, entries and exits. That’s the easy part. But intuition in trading is a completely different story.

In my view, intuition isn’t some mysterious talent reserved for a chosen few. It’s not about being born with a “gift” for the markets. Intuition is built - brick by brick - through thousands of hours of exposure to the charts. Every time you study price movement, analyse setups and observe how trades play out, your brain takes subconscious “snapshots” of patterns and market behaviour.

Over time, these snapshots accumulate into a larger picture of how certain instruments move. That’s when you start to feel where price might go - your subconsciousness has been trained to recognise patterns your conscious mind can’t yet articulate.

In trading literature, this phenomenon is often called gut feeling. But in reality, it’s just intuition - a refined, experience-driven ability to process complex information quickly and silently. Some traders develop it sooner, others later, but with enough exposure and reflection, I believe most of you can cultivate it.

Science backs this up. A study published in Psychological Science (2012) by Joel Pearson and colleagues showed that people can use unconscious visual information to make faster and more accurate decisions. Their research revealed that intuition isn’t a “sixth sense” - it’s your brain processing data you didn’t even realise you absorbed.

In trading, that means intuition is simply your brain leveraging all those subtle patterns you’ve seen over months and years of chart time.

So when someone tells you to “trust your gut,” what they’re really saying is this: trust the experience you’ve already put in. Your intuition is the silent proof of the work you’ve done.

- Luke FT.