Gut feelings? help make more successful financial traders

Financial traders are better at reading their 'gut feelings? than the general population - and the better they are at this ability, the more successful they are as traders, according to new research led by the University of Cambridge. In economics and finance most models analyse conscious reasoning and are based on psychology. We should refocus on the body, or more exactly the interaction between body and brain. Medics find this obvious; economists don't - John Coates 'Gut feelings? - known technically as interoceptive sensations - are sensations that carry information to the brain from many tissues of the body, including the heart and lungs, as well as the gut. They can report anything from body temperature to breathlessness, racing heart, fullness from the gut, bladder and bowel, and they underpin states such as hunger, thirst, pain, and anxiety. We are often not conscious - or at least barely aware - of this information, but it provides valuable inputs in risky decision making. High-risk choices are accompanied by rapid and subtle physiological changes that feed back to the brain, affecting our decisions, and steering us away from gambles that are likely to lead to loss and towards those that are likely to lead to profit.