242 THE INTUITIVE INVESTOR
by definition, is the knowing of something directly, without under-
standing why.
Lions dismiss this sort of knowing. They reason, “If I cannot
explain how I know something then I can’t claim to know it.”
Imagine a portfolio manager walking into a meeting with a pen-
sion client and saying, “I think we should sell all our Microsoft.”
Immediately the client would say, “Why?” Right? We’ve all been
trained and conditioned to respond in that left-brained fashion.
But what if the portfolio manager simply responded, “I can’t
explain why, I just know we should sell it.” Well, then things would
get interesting. Side glances. Awkward throat-clearing. Patterns
interrupted on every side. Eventually, one of the clients would
remind you of the rules of the game: You must provide us with a
rationale for your investment decisions (or you can’t pass “Go”
and you certainly can’t collect $200!).
Imagine, though, that even in the face of this resistance our
bold portfolio manager held his ground and proclaimed, “The
intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a
leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the
solution comes to you and you don’t know how or why.”
What would follow? What would happen next? Would the
pension clients scratch their heads and say, “Gee, I never thought
of it that way. Hmmm, let’s give this point of view serious consid-
eration.”
Sure they would. Right after they reminded themselves that it
was “only” a few billion dollars in question. Are you kidding?!
They’d bundle him up in a straitjacket faster than you can say, “I
believe in aliens” and take him away to the silly house. The whole
incident would be relegated to the status of a humorous dinner-
party story.
Here’s the interesting part, though. That crazy statement about
intellect and intuition, the one that we would probably dismiss as
nonsense, is a direct quote from Albert Einstein, arguably the best
thinker of the 20th century.26-29 ware 242 1/19/01, 1:19 PM