Underingstanding Your Issues That Deal With Trading Part 2

Understanding Your Core Issue

Part Two: An Amazing Twist to Van's Story

by
Van K. Tharp, Ph.D.

Last week I discussed my personal core issue of loneliness. As I said, everyone has a core issue inside of them; one issue that rules the subconscious more so than any other. I believe that most people have something similar to what I described with respect to core issues. In fact, A Course in Miracles says it is part of the human condition, part of the way we’ve created ourselves. However, we will learn this week that these core issues are merely beliefs that limit us, and I will show you first hand how getting rid of my core issue opened me up to a miracle.

We basically all feel a deep sense of loneliness, emptiness, lack of wholeness, or something similar because we feel separated from God. Some people want to connect with a soul mate to feel complete, while others want the whole world to love them and approve of them to feel complete.

It’s this feeling of lack that is the basis for self-sabotage because it makes you think that you are much less than you are – that you are not worthwhile and that you cannot have abundance or success or joy or happiness. But that is only because you identify with the thoughts and feelings that pass through you that we call the ego.

Let me quote from A Course in Miracles:

What if you looked within and saw no sin? This “fearful” question is one the ego never asks. And you who ask it now are threatening the ego’s whole defensive system too seriously for it to bother to pretend it is your friend. Text, page 424.

But your thoughts, beliefs, feelings and subpersonalities are only you acting from what Eckhart Tolle calls object consciousness because you think you are them. And if that’s who you believe you are, then you’ll create a very limited world to live in and have your life experiences. But there is another way:

For on the voice you choose to hear, and on the sights you choose to see, depends entirely your whole belief in what you are. Text, page 425.

It’s interesting because I had been exposed to all of this material by the time I became a full time trading coach in 1986. However, I was still working on accepting concepts such as “I create everything that happens to me.” That was very hard for me to accept initially. When I’d read passages like the one above that I just quoted from A Course in Miracles, it made no sense at all. But that’s because I had not experienced it. I had not lived it.

I am NOT my thoughts and feelings. Instead, I am the awareness of my thoughts and feelings. It totally makes sense to me now because I have had an experience of the wholeness that comes from that realization. That realization is a part of me now, but I also realize I have a long way to go.

Several years ago, I could never have written these types of articles that I’ve written on my experience. First, I hadn’t had the experiences. But most importantly, I’d have been too concerned about your reactions to everything I’ve said.

However, I certainly know that I’m not your thoughts and reactions, just as I also know that I’m not my reactions to your thoughts and reactions and also that you are not those thoughts and reactions. My point is to help you realize that. When you do so you will have no limits to as what you can be, do, or have -- as a trader, as an investor, or as a human being.

Amazing Outcome

Remember the amazing twist I mentioned in last week’s article? After experiencing such a feeling of peace while working on my issues in Florida and remembering my experience with Mitzi, I had a strong urge to look at that letter from Mitzi’s husband again. I had not read it in many years. I had kept it in a family tree album. I pulled it out and reread it after all these years. This time, it seemed like a different letter when I read it and all the emotion was gone. I learned that Mitzi was just a nickname. Her full name was spelled out in the letter as well as her name after she married the American. It also mentioned her daughter, Diana, who was born in 1958.

I’d remembered her daughter and years ago had the urge to look her up. I didn’t because I assumed that it might be sad for both of us because we both probably would just have very distant memories of Mitzi – whom we both considered a mother.

However, this time the Mitzi voice, which had become my internal guidance, said, “Look her up.” So I did. You can find almost anyone on the internet these days and I paid $2.95 for a people search. I got her name, address and phone number. But that report also had something else that blew me away. It had a list of Diana’s relatives and one of the relatives listed was Mitzi’s full married name, who it said was 80 years old. I immediately did another search and came up with her phone number and address. Mitzi is still alive!! The information about how she had died from a brain tumor wasn’t what happened. She did have a brain tumor but she did not die from it. She is alive and well, living on the west coast.

I contacted her immediately and Mitzi was as excited to hear from me as I was to hear her voice. So as far as I’m concerned, I have a Mom who is still alive, which is a tremendous blessing. I arranged to visit with her upon my return from Fiji a few weeks ago, and it was wonderful reunion.

I have much more to say about this and hope to share more with you later.

I can’t imagine a much bigger miracle than finding out that a person I believed had passed away is still alive, and that I would have the opportunity to meet with her again after more than 50+ years apart. — Van Tharp

To learn more about Dr. Tharp and his amazing teaching abilities go here

Trading Education

Underingstanding Your Issues That Deal With Trading

Understanding Your Core Issue

Part One: Van Shares His Story

by
Van K. Tharp, Ph.D.

After many years of doing coaching work with people, studying human psychology and behavior, as well as doing much work on my own self exploration, I long ago concluded that everyone has a core issue inside of them—one issue that rules the subconscious more so than any other. Because people are so afraid of that one core issue popping up, they tend to hide it deep within themselves. Most hope it never surfaces and will do anything to keep from experiencing it. So it goes unresolved and continues to run thoughts, emotions and actions from deep within ourselves.

It’s important for each of us to remember we are not our emotions. Instead, our emotions are energy flowing through us. And what you resist tends to persist, even if it is buried deep inside.

I’ve been busy this summer doing a new kind of self exploration that has led me on an extraordinary journey in dealing with my very core issue. This has been a powerful experience for me, and I’d like to share some of it with you.

So let’s jump right into a little of Van’s early childhood history.

Childhood History

Six months after I was born, my father left for the Philippines. He was involved in reconstruction after the war, but I was too young to understand that. All I knew was that suddenly, I didn’t have a father. My mother told me that I was so upset that I wouldn’t eat and it took a lot of work on their part to get food into me.

As I gradually got over my father leaving, my grandfather became my father-figure. When I was two years old, my father returned. Then my family moved to Japan—without my grandfather. Thus, I was now losing my grandfather. And for most of my childhood, I always thought of my Grandfather’s house as my home.

In Japan, I became particularly close to a Japanese housekeeper that we called Mitzi. She was like a mother to me and to this date one of my treasures is a picture of Mitzi and I together.

But at five years old, I left Japan and I never saw Mitzi again. It felt like my heart broke. Gratefully, I went on to have my core family with me for the rest of my childhood. Nevertheless, I think the psychological damage from the losses was done at that point.

I don’t have any charge on any of these individual happenings because I’ve done many, many years of clearing work on my issues neutralizing them. However, my one core issue was still there, even after all the work I’d done.

Let me share another thing that happened. My mother died of cancer in 1993 at the age of 85. She’d lived a good life and I was at peace with her. I was actually happy that she had made her transition and could now join the rest of our family (my father died in 1977 and my sister died in 1988). What I didn’t expect was a reaction that I had going through my mother’s things.

What I found among my mother’s things was a letter from Mitzi’s husband, written in 1958, trying so desperately to reach us. When I read that letter, I became about as emotional as I can ever remember being. It was my mother’s funeral, but I was crying over Mitzi.

Mitzi had eventually married a U.S. soldier and moved to the U.S. My family was living in England, so we never saw her. But my understanding is that my sister said something to upset her that caused a rift between our families. Furthermore, I’d been told that Mitzi had died a few years later of a brain tumor before my family returned from England.

So what does all this have to do with my core issue? Well, my core issue has been a very deep sense of loneliness and emptiness inside. I’ve only felt it a few times, but when it came up it was so bad that I never wanted to feel it again. In fact, I tend to believe that my whole life has been about doing whatever was necessary not to feel that feeling. I wouldn’t get too close to people because they might leave me, and I’d distract myself with work or escape activities. I’ve always felt like that emptiness was around someplace that I had to hide from it.

And Then Something Happened!

In June, I was in Florida doing a preparation course for my Oneness course in Fiji. We were doing an exercise on strengthening your inner guidance. We were asked to imagine the qualities we wanted our inner guidance to have so that our relationship would become very, very strong and wonderful and we were given blessings to help us produce that. I decided that I wanted an internal guidance that was very, very joyful.

We were doing an exercise in which we concentrated on the qualities we wanted, asking the universe to give them to us. And while we were doing that we were getting “hands on” oneness blessings. I had three of them. The first two felt very masculine, strong, and comforting. But that wasn’t what I was looking for. However, the third blessing given transferred a very gentle feminine energy into me. And when I felt it, an immense joy came over me. And suddenly, the word “Mitzi” came into my heart.

That evening, I felt this utter sense of completeness inside of me. And I knew that it was now part of me and that I could never feel that dreaded sense of emptiness again. I realized that feeling of emptiness was just an illusion. It was just a feeling that I identified with and resisted. Now, I have a new feeling of being whole and complete inside of myself, like I will never have to look outside myself again for that sense of fulfillment. That feeling is within me and it is always available.

At that point I felt very, very happy. And my internal guidance (which feels like it is Mitzi) says that this is only the beginning of something much more magnificent to come.

Next week I’ll share an amazing twist in this story. My memories of Mitzi triggered an amazing series of events, and I look forward to sharing more with you.

About Van Tharp: Trading coach, and author, Dr. Van K. Tharp is widely recognized for his best-selling book Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom and his outstanding Peak Performance Home Study program - a highly regarded classic that is suitable for all levels of traders and investors. You can learn more about Van Tharp at www.iitm.com.

Van K Tharp Achieving Balance

Achieve Balance in Your Trading/Investing

by
Van K. Tharp

This certainly would rank as one of my top ten tips to you because balance is so important. First, we’ll talk about balance between profits and losses. If you can understand that, then it will be easier for you to understand the importance of balance in other areas.

We live in a world of polarities — good vs. bad, up vs. down, young vs. old, happy vs. sad. The "win vs loss" polarity is just one example of many. In most cases, we tend to judge the polarity in that we prefer one side and dislike the other side. However, one of the secrets to life is to make both sides of the polarity okay. But, what does that mean?

That’s a hard one for most people to understand, but perhaps it will be easier when I explain it in terms of profits and losses. You cannot be a successful trader if you are not willing to have both profits and losses. As the mechanical trader in Book 5 of the Peak Performance Course says, "It’s like only wanting to breathe in and not wanting to breathe out." Both are a significant part of the trading process."

Most people don’t understand this concept at all. They want to be right all the time. They want to make money on every trade. Yet that will not happen because losses are a part of the trading/investing process. When you understand the relationship, however, you can come to terms with losses and make them okay.

A natural part of the trading process is to have a point at which you must unload a position or trade at a loss in order to preserve your capital. Those losses will happen to most people about half of the time or more. And you must make them okay or neutral.

If a loss is not okay, then you will not take it. When you’re not willing to take a loss, it usually gets a little bigger. When it rains, it pours. As a result, it becomes even harder to take — much more painful. If you didn’t take it the first time, as it becomes bigger you will be even less likely to take it. What’s likely to happen? It probably will become even bigger. The cycle typically continues until the loss becomes so big that you have to take it. This typically occurs when you get a margin call from your broker.

However, investors might never get a margin call if they are not margined. Instead, they tie up valuable capital in a falling investment that might last forever. There are probably millions of investors right now who are hanging on to losing investments, just because they are waiting for it to come back. Consequently, you must make it okay to take losses.

The other half of the equation is also important (and equally puzzling). You can’t put too much importance in gains. People who do value profits too highly tend to take them quickly. Why? Because if they don’t take them, they are afraid they will get away.

An example of this was pointed out to me through real estate investors. A group of investors got into a real estate deal that started to lose money. Instead of getting out and taking their loss, they elected to stay in and ride it way down. When asked why they didn’t get out of a bad investment, their comment was, "We haven’t gotten our money back yet."

These same investors subsequently got into another real estate deal. It started to become profitable very quickly. In fact, it rose to 100% profit and more. But the investors who were holding onto the bad investment, sold out quickly at a small profit. When they were asked why they sold, the reason was, "We lost money on the other deal, so we wanted to make sure we got our money back on this one."

This concept of balance is very important and it applies to any polarity you can think of — not just profits and losses.

About Van Tharp: Trading coach, and author, Dr. Van K. Tharp is widely recognized for his best-selling book Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom and his outstanding Peak Performance Home Study program - a highly regarded classic that is suitable for all levels of traders and investors. You can learn more about Van Tharp at www.iitm.com.

What is Day Trading

What is Day Trading?

Day Trading is a broadly used term with many shades of meaning. To add precision to our definition, we need to break it down into individual areas.

• Scalping – Quickly jumping in and out of positions with 1000 or more shares with the goal of making between 1/16 and 1/4 point. 1000 shares with a profit of $0.25 each would be $250. Achieved repeatedly throughout the day, this can produce incredible income. If things go wrong the results can be equally decisive. All positions are closed by day's end and the trader is in all cash.

• Day Swinging – Finding between one and three nice moves a day. The goal is to make between 2 and 5 points per trade while holding a position between 5 minutes and 5 hours. Share quantities can be much lower than 1000 and still have positive results. All positions are closed by day's end and the trader is in all cash.

• Sleeping – Holding a moving stock overnight with the anticipation of a significant gap the next morning. Retail investors come home from work and see that the stock is up and place orders overnight, which brings the price up further. The stock then Opens the next morning significantly higher than the previous day's Close. The goal is to sell before or at the Open for a gain of 2 points or more.

• Swinging – Holding a stock between 2 and 10 days, with the goal of making 5 points or more, and selling the stock when its daily trend reverses direction. The trader uses day trading direct access software in an attempt to get in and out at a more optimum price.

Many Day Traders use a combination of these methods, depending on what each individual situation would appear to warrant.

The advent of the Internet and electronic trading has put real power into the hands of ordinary traders and investors that was never previously dreamed possible. Demand for services has brought prices down to unparalleled levels. For between $80 and $130 a month -- even less, depending on number of trades executed -- anyone can now have all the bells and whistles of real-time access to the Stock Market.

But this power is a double-edged sword. The ability to buy and sell thousands of shares with the click of the mouse can be extremely rewarding or devastatingly dangerous. With power comes responsibility. It’s estimated that the washout rate for new day traders is between 80% and 90%.

Simply put, just because its so easy doesn’t mean its easy. Everything is easy when you know what you’re doing, but the learning curve can destroy you. Unfortunately, many people get into the market without learning all they can before putting their money on the line. By the time they start to understand the game, it’s too late. They’re broke. Or worse, in debt -- when the broker sells their losing stock out from under them to meet margin calls.

The secret of success in trading the stock market is the following:

• Have a Methodology for anticipating the probabilities

• The ability to control emotions

• Discipline to adhere to a tested plan

• Carefully managing Risk.

Failure, therefore, can be attributed to this:

• The habit of allowing greed, fear, or sloppiness to assert itself over intelligent planning and execution.

The goal then, is to work with a tested rationale for Entry, Exit, and Risk Control. History repeats itself, over and over again. The Day Trader must understand the past in order to confidently anticipate the future. Using the odds as a tool, trading stocks becomes a game of waiting patiently for high probability situations to present themselves, and then taking full advantage of them. In the event that things don’t work as expected, the discipline to exit quickly and not wait for the stock to “come back” is mandatory.