244 THE INTUITIVE INVESTOR
degree of expertise occurs when a person’s experience and knowl-
edge allows him to move beyond intellect into the realm of intu-
ition. In the words of Bill Williams—a trader of 35 years and author
of the book Trading Chaos: Applying Expert Techniques to Maxi-
mize Profits (John Wiley & Sons 1995): “At the fifth level, which
is what I call the expert level, trading is almost all right hemisphere.
It’s all intuitive.... At this level you know what is the right trade
without knowing how you know.”
At this highest level, the intellect—which is revered by the lions
who run the major investment firms—actually gets in the way of
superior performance. Dr. Richard McCall, author of The Way of
the Warrior-Trader: The Financial Risk-Taker’s Guide to Samurai
Courage, Confidence, and Discipline (Irwin Professional Publish-
ing 1996), says, “The more intellectual your approach, the less you
are able to be intuitive and responsive in the moment.... The fact
is indisputable: when you really do trade well, you really cannot
call it mechanical. You must be an intuitive trader!”
The paradox is that good intuition relies on lots of left-brained,
intellectual experience and hard work. Edward Toppel, long-term
member of the Index and Options Market and author of Zen in
the Markets (Warner 1994), writes, “Intuition allows you to take
advantage of all that hard work you’ve done.”
Actually, this “paradox” is consistent with the message of this
book: balance. A superior investor will use the skills of both the
right and left brain hemispheres. The mistake that many investors
make, however, is relying solely on their favorite hemisphere, the
logical left side. The purpose in citing all these examples of suc-
cessful intuitive traders is to encourage lion investors to experi-
ment with using intuition, so that they will begin using all the
weapons available.
“What does intuitive trading actually look like?” a lion might
ask. Here is a description from Linda Leventhal, long-term inde-
pendent trader and member of the International Monetary Market
division of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange:26-29 ware 244 1/19/01, 1:20 PM