I have seen a couple of documentaries on Daniel. It is insane what this guy can do with numbers. Everytime I see something about savants with these types of gifts I am truly amazed and it always stimulates my interest in learning more about psychology and the functioning of the human brain.
The thing I often wonder however is would these unique skills have any application to trading? Clearly abilities such as pattern recognition skills serve a trader well but since I believe greatly that trading success is about risk management, discipline, and simple system execution I am not sure that abilities such as Daniel's would be a great asset.
Prediction is of course the holy grail of trading but as of yet I know of no one who has that ability, save for Nostradamus (LOL).
Is the ability to store vast sums of historical information a benefit as a 'short-term' trader?