Archive for March, 2011

Peak performance 101 home study position sizing review

Thursday, March 10th, 2011








Tharpy’s newsletter took a break from September 2008 to January 2009 and there was nothing noteworthy or profitable about those particular newsletters during a very quick stock market downturn. So, all the while Tharpy’s been posturing that a trader can make money quickly during a downturn he seems to have not done anything himself, nor have any of his newsletter contributors reported that they generated small fortunes during that period – and Tharp lacked any insight about the decline and upcoming bailout. I guess it surprised him as it surprised us.

Here’s a nice quote from a lady when asked about Van Tharp and the Peak Performance home study course, “He’s yesterday’s magician, if he’s ever even been a magician at all.”

With a number of folks looking for reviews and feedback on Peak Performance home study course and position sizing I figured I’d include a couple of comments from others and relay a little about what to expect from potentially wasting your time with Tharp’s material:

 

Techniques for haggling with yourself are in the third volume of the Peak Performance Home Study Course: However, I would like to provide you with this introductory information about what your parts may be, their positive intentions, and how you can get to know them better. In particular, I want to explore the intentions of parts that might seem to function to lower your self-esteem by producing fear, anger, depression, or feelings of worthlessness.

In our Peak Performance 101 workshop, we expand on this work by incorporating exercises on an experiential level. And again this work can only be practiced in an interactive environment, such as a workshop, where student and teacher work on individual situations. But you can do the first step in the process, which is the first step our workshop students take. We ask people to do an exercise to determine what parts are in their heads. The exercise is called a “Parts Party.” I recommend you do it about half an hour before you go to sleep, while you are in bed. 

Parts Party

First, since everyone reading this is a trader or wants to be a trader, assume you have a trading part. Bring up that trading part and ask him/her/it the following questions:

1. What are you trying to do for me? What’s your positive intention for me?

2. Who are you in conflict with? What other parts give you the most trouble in your trading?

3. How does this part represent itself? If it is an image, what does it look like and how would someone else recognize it if it walked into the room? If it is a voice, whose voice is it? If it is a feeling, then describe the feeling. How heavy is it? How big is it? And so on.
Ask all your parts to come and let them know you are just giving them a chance to show up and play. But whenever you become aware of a new part, ask it the same questions.

The next morning, after everyone has done the exercise, we ask each participant about their parts. Often the discussion helps others discover additional parts that might not have shown up at the party. Here are some typical responses:

• “I had five parts show up. The trader, whose primary purpose is to make me the best possible trader I can be, and the banker, who is very conservative and in charge of risk management. The little boy, whose intention is to have fun and enjoy life. My family part, whose intention is to love and care for my family and give them lots of time; and my mother. I don’t know what my mother’s intention is, but she is always telling me what can go wrong and making me worry. I know it’s her because it is her voice I hear. The trader, at times, can be in conflict with all of the other parts.”

• “Well, I seem to have four trading-related parts. At least, that is all that showed up last night. One part, the trader whose job is to trade. The second part is the broker part of me whose job is to execute customer orders. However, he’s always giving the trader advice based on what I hear from my customers and that’s usually not productive. I also have a gambler part who really likes the action of playing the market. He is counterproductive. Then I have a part of me that is angry all the time—especially at the gambler part of losing so much money. He tends to disrupt my personal life as well.”

• “I have a skydiver part and a banker part. Neither of them gets along at all. The banker part is very business-like. It makes money by taking low-risk ideas. It manages money well. On the other hand, the skydiver part just loves fun. It loves the excitement. But what it does is very dangerous. It could kill me—both physically and financially.”

• “What I discovered is that I have thousands of parts. I have five advanced degrees and there are parts responsible for each. I’m involved in three different jobs and there are parts involved in each of those. A different part represents each family member—for example, there is not just a father part, but I have a part of me to look after each child. I could go on. And there are new parts being formed each time I want to learn something new. The problem I have is that none of these parts have enough time.”

Spend some time thinking about your parts.  It’s ok if you don’t completely grasp this concept. (I admit, I don’t fully grasp this) As I mentioned this is core material from both the Peak Performance Home Study Course and a very interactive exercise in the workshop. If you just start thinking about this concept and what your many parts may be, I believe it will be a very a positive and useful exercise in self understanding and moving closer to peak performance whether in trading or other aspects of your daily life. (Perhaps, but you won’t make any money in trading – there’s simply no direct link to trading application. What makes me say that? Tharp cannot support himself from trading activities – so practicing this particular exercise doesn’t do much for him either.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

More comments:

“…in the end, the long list of chapters becomes a voodoo ritual – do this, do that and everything will be fine. what? it did not work – perhaps you did not do it exactly as described….”

 

“FWIW I find Tharp’s well written and measured books at complete odds with the “become a trillionaire in 2 hours with zero risk!” tone of his web site. I am often tempted by the endorsements of PMK (etc) to buy a course but then look at the site and run screaming in the opposite direction. One of the many things I like about TBB is its total lack of such claims.”


“Yet millions flock to purchase trading advice products.” 

 

 

When a Forbes magazine journalist visited Tharpy’s seminar operation in 1997 the journalist claimed he felt it was simply taking advantage of the day trader boot camp momentum of the period, not anything substantial in terms of lasting educational value.

Don’t get me wrong, some of Tharpy’s interviews are interesting – or a least they were ten or more years ago, as he did make sense, but then again we all make sense… we just don’t make money in the investment markets… and neither does Tharp. I’ve heard about him managing the retirement account of his operation, but his advertising hype is all about how easy it is to make money in the markets once you address your psychological blocks – yet, he can’t seem to do this for himself – and if he ever did anything significant in trading over the last ten years, even making a small fortune – he would have publicized it – but there seems nothing of merit for him to mention about actual trading.

 

So, on the one hand – come to my seminar because it is going to be very easy to make money in the markets when I show you how to handle your emotions, but I don’t have any actual results, although I’m an expert on how to overcome negative trading psychology.


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