Is intelligence important for trading?
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I think this gives us a hint that trading is not that different from any other venture after all: The top 5% are the most intelligent ones objectively, but they are also the only ones who know they are not all that smart after all. So they will qualify themselves as "not extremely dumb" or "slightly intelligent".
The other 95% are too stupid to realize they are not Einsteins and brag about their brains because they have a PhD or manage a McDonalds or whatever else it may be that sets them apart from their immediate surroundings.
The difference between trading (and enterprise in general, to a limited degree) and other professions is that the average person makes money (albeit not an amount worth existing for) as a slave but not as a trader. Other enterpreneurs are somewhere inbetween traders and slaves, depending on what exactly it is they do.
That said, if you define intelligence as the ability to come up with ideas that Archimedes or Gauss might have had, I still think with proper motivation a successful trader would be most likely to fall into that category. Certainly more so than the average PhD.
As others have mentioned, I believe that there are other kinds of intelligence besides the traditional ones that we are tested on.
In the book 7 Kinds of Smart by Thomas Armstrong â he lists the following categories:
1.) Word Smart: Linguistic intelligence â language, literature, verbal skills (journalist, poet, lawyer)
2.) Logic Smart: mathematical and scientific intelligence (programmer, accountant, scientists)
3.) Picture Smart: spatial intelligence, thinking in pictures and images (architects, artists, pilots, mechanical engineers)
4.) Music Smart: musical intelligence (musicians)
5.) Body Smart: kinesthetic intelligence â controlling oneâs body movements and handling objects skillfully (athletes, surgeons, soldiers)
6.) People Smart: social or inter-personal intelligence â ability to understand and work/network with other people (politicians, salespeople)
7.) Self Smart: intra-personal intelligence. Intelligence of the inner self. (counselors, theologians, philosophers)
The point of the book is that IQ tests typically only measure the top three intelligences: word, logic and picture and ignore the bottom four. Also, the smarts that society values changes over time. For instance, in the cave man days, who would you rather have in your cave, some geek like Bill Gates or a big muscular type to help fight off rival tribes and animals.
Some people say that the bottom four are skills, not intelligence. Of course you could make the same argument that being good at language or math is just a skill.
As far as traders go, I would rate the leading intelligenceâs needed as follows:
1.) Floor Trader - intra-personal intelligence, kinesthetic intelligence, social or inter-personal intelligence, and mathematical intelligence.
2.) Off Floor Trader - intra-personal intelligence and spatial intelligence and/or mathematical intelligence.
The key intelligence for all traders being intra-personal intelligence: knowing oneâs self, discipline etc.
For a floor trader being big and physical can be an advantage (even if you are not big, you have to be physical to get noticed). Making friends and developing relationships is key as well (youâre not going to get a lot of trades is no one likes you). Mathematics skills if you have to calculate and remember a lot of numbers in your head.
For off-floor traders besides intra-personal intelligence, spatial intelligence is required if you trade off of patterns on your screen and/or mathematical intelligence if you do a lot of system development and backtesting.
The way I look at it, with a few exceptions (perhaps circus freaks & criminals), society does not pay people well unless they have some kind of advanced intelligence. The problem is that over half the intelligences are not traditionally measured. That is why we have threads like this, wondering why people can make money when they may not measure highly in traditional intelligence tests.
In the book 7 Kinds of Smart by Thomas Armstrong â he lists the following categories:
1.) Word Smart: Linguistic intelligence â language, literature, verbal skills (journalist, poet, lawyer)
2.) Logic Smart: mathematical and scientific intelligence (programmer, accountant, scientists)
3.) Picture Smart: spatial intelligence, thinking in pictures and images (architects, artists, pilots, mechanical engineers)
4.) Music Smart: musical intelligence (musicians)
5.) Body Smart: kinesthetic intelligence â controlling oneâs body movements and handling objects skillfully (athletes, surgeons, soldiers)
6.) People Smart: social or inter-personal intelligence â ability to understand and work/network with other people (politicians, salespeople)
7.) Self Smart: intra-personal intelligence. Intelligence of the inner self. (counselors, theologians, philosophers)
The point of the book is that IQ tests typically only measure the top three intelligences: word, logic and picture and ignore the bottom four. Also, the smarts that society values changes over time. For instance, in the cave man days, who would you rather have in your cave, some geek like Bill Gates or a big muscular type to help fight off rival tribes and animals.
Some people say that the bottom four are skills, not intelligence. Of course you could make the same argument that being good at language or math is just a skill.
As far as traders go, I would rate the leading intelligenceâs needed as follows:
1.) Floor Trader - intra-personal intelligence, kinesthetic intelligence, social or inter-personal intelligence, and mathematical intelligence.
2.) Off Floor Trader - intra-personal intelligence and spatial intelligence and/or mathematical intelligence.
The key intelligence for all traders being intra-personal intelligence: knowing oneâs self, discipline etc.
For a floor trader being big and physical can be an advantage (even if you are not big, you have to be physical to get noticed). Making friends and developing relationships is key as well (youâre not going to get a lot of trades is no one likes you). Mathematics skills if you have to calculate and remember a lot of numbers in your head.
For off-floor traders besides intra-personal intelligence, spatial intelligence is required if you trade off of patterns on your screen and/or mathematical intelligence if you do a lot of system development and backtesting.
The way I look at it, with a few exceptions (perhaps circus freaks & criminals), society does not pay people well unless they have some kind of advanced intelligence. The problem is that over half the intelligences are not traditionally measured. That is why we have threads like this, wondering why people can make money when they may not measure highly in traditional intelligence tests.
All that "other kinds of intelligence" mumba-jumba is a scum. It's funny to notice that the aforementioned author used slang in his book's title. Anyway, what is new in what that author and alike are talking about?
Everyone is aware that there are many types of skills. Some people can sing, some people can draw, some people run fast. That's obvious. So, the only thing that is new is to call them "other kinds of intelligence". So, why do they call it an intelligence instead of a skill? Because there is a HUGE market which consists of 98% of people who do not score high on IQ test. Some of them are a bit upset about that. Those are the people this scum targets.
An intelligence is an ability to acquire and apply knowledge. No more, no less. Now, try re-reading descriptions in Tea's post keeping that in mind and you'll see that it's just a bullshit. What they do is taking a word, giving it a new meaning and then present it in a fashion that an old meaning somehow changed. That would be just meaningless exercises in twisted logic. However, when they sell that to gullible people as legitimate research, it becomes a scum.
Again, for people with the "other kinds of intelligence". I am not arguing the existence or importance of many skills and abilities human beings possess. What I am saying is that those skills and abilities have nothing to do with intelligence.
Wow!
I didn't think that this was going to be controversial. You would think that I was advocating shrinking the Emini tick size or something.
I do agree as the dictionary says that intelligence is "The capacity to acquire and apply knowledge".
But, doesn't a musician acquire and apply knowledge in order to play an instrument or write music?
Doesn't a politician have to acquire and apply knowledge in order to put together coalitions and to convince people to follow him or her?
Doesn't a philosopher have to acquire and apply knowledge in order to invent a new philosophical theory?
I think that my post is very logical. However, if you are closed minded, canât think for yourself and have a fragile ego â then I guess you might be threatened by a new way of looking at things.
My guess igsi, is that you are someone who scored high in math and science and you think that makes you smarter than everyone else. My saying that there are other types of intelligence probably threatens your self image.
Obviously you didnât score high in the linguistic area, as you communicate in English no better than a monkey. You are probably inept in everything else in your life outside of programming computers.