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「Trading Beyond the Matrix」を読む

Van K. Tharp
Trading Beyond the Matrix: The Red Pill for Traders and Investors
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トレードコーチとメンタルクリニック 無理をしない自分だけの成功ルール

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Level I
TRANSFORMATION OF THE TRADING GAME
UNDERSTANDING THE BASICS
レベル1 トレードゲームの変革

[ケメコ注]
トレードについての正しい知識
トレード全般、トレード手法、トレード-システムについて、誤った考へ方を修正することについて
[ケメコ注ここまで]

The first new rule is that trading is as much a profession as any other.

The second new rule is that trading reflects human performance much as any top athletic endeavor. You must understand that yo responsible for the results you get.

The third new rule is that objectives are important. Furthermore, you achieve your objectives through position sizing strategies.

The fourth new rule is that trading/investing is all about probability and reward-to-risk ratios under specific market conditions. When you understand these rules and the market conditions, you can use statistics to predict what your performance will be under similar market conditions in the future.

1️⃣ Learning to Trade Is Hard Work, but It Can Be Taught
Great trading requires a lot of work—around 10,000 hours of efficient practice. If you were to put in 10,000 hours worth of practice that was grounded in nonuseful beliefs and end up losing money in the process, then your work would have been pretty useless. That’s why you need to transform yourself in order to efficiently adopt a level one transformation.

Tharp Think Principles
1. Successful trading can be modeled and taught to other people.
2. Learning to trade well requires as much work/education as any other profession.

2️⃣ Knowing Yourself
A key to successful trading is knowing yourself. Only by knowing yourself can you develop objectives and trading systems that fit you.

Tharp Think Pronciples
3. You need to find a trading system that fits you.
4. In order to accomplish that, you must know yourself:
     (a) Your values
     (b) Your strengths
     (c) Your weaknesses (d) Your parts
     (e) Significant beliefs (spiritual, self, market, system)
     (f) Trading edges
     (g) Trading weaknesses
5. You can only trade your beliefs about the markets, not the markets themselves. Thus, you should know and understand your beliefs and whether or not they are useful.
6. System development is 100 percent (1) beliefs, (2) mental states, and (3) mental strategies. Thus, it is 100 percent psychology.
7. You must know your personal criteria for being able to trade a system with confidence.

3️⃣ Mistakes
Once you start trading, you’ll probably make mistakes. I define a mistake as not following your rules. When you understand mistakes, you’ll have a whole new avenue to follow to improve your trading efficiency (i.e., to make fewer mistakes) and improve your profits. These are all covered by the next set of rules.

Tharp Think Pronciples
8. A mistake means not following your rules. If you don’t have rules, everything you do is a mistake.
9. It is much better to trade a lower-scoring SQN system that fits you than a higher-scoring SQN system that doesn’t fit you.
10. You are responsible for everything that happens to you. When you understand this, you can correct your mistakes. We call this respond-ability.
11. Repeating the same mistake over and over again is self-sabotage.
12. A trader who makes one mistake in 10 trades is 90 percent efficient; that 10 percent drop in efficiency could be enough to make him/her a losing trader.

4️⃣ Objectives and Position Sizing Strategies
A key undersanding is (1) that objectives are much more important than most people think, and (2) that you achieve your objectives through position sizing strategies. The quality of your system just tells you how easy it will be to use position sizing strategies to achieve your objectives. Most people don’t even think about objectives, except that they’d like to make a lot of money. Most professional traders don’t have a clue about position sizing strategies. They learn that asset allocation is important but don’t understand that the how much factor is what makes it important—and that’s precisely what position sizing strategies are all about.

Tharp Think Pronciples
13. Fifty percent of system development is thinking through and clearly defining a set of written objectives. Those objectives should address your desired gain, your maximum acceptable drawdown, and the relative importance of each.
14. You need to design core objectives that fit you.
15. There are potentially as many objectives as there are traders.
16. You meet your objectives through position sizing strategies.
17. The overwhelming majority of your performance is due to your position sizing strategy and your efficiency as a trader.
18. You must know your mission/purpose in life and incorporate that into your trading.
19. You need to know your financial freedom number (passive income per month less monthly expenses). When it’s positive, you are financially free.

5️⃣ Probability and Reward-to- Risk Assessment
Trading/investing is all about probability and reward-to-risk ratios under specific market conditions. When you understand these rules and the market conditions at any given time, you can use statistics to predict some boundaries for your performance. While you cannot predict the future, you can get a good idea of what your performance will be through statistics and proper sampling under the different possible market conditions. As you begin to understand this, you’ll be amazed at the changes that occur

Tharp Think Pronciples
20. Never open a position without knowing the initial risk.
21. Define your profits and losses as a multiple of your initial risk (R-multiples).
22. Limit your losses to 1R or less.
23. Make sure your profits on the average are bigger than 1R.
24. Never take a trade unless the reward-to-risk ratio of that trade is at least 2:1 and perhaps even 3:1.
25. Your trading system is a distribution of R-multiples.
26. When you understand No. 6, you should be able to hear/see a description of a system and know the kind of R-multiple distribution it would generate.
27. The mean of that distribution is the expectancy, and it tells you what you’ll make on the average trade. It should be a positive number.
28. The mean, standard deviation, and number of trades determine the SQN score for your system.
29. Your SQN score tells you how easy it will be to meet your objectives using position sizing strategies. Other than that, your system has nothing to do with meeting your objectives.
30. Systems are usually named after their setups, which are usually based on some attempt to predict future prices. Prediction has nothing to do with trading well.
31. System performance has to do with controlling risk and managing the position through your exits.

6️⃣ Systems and Market Type
Tharp Think Pronciples
32. There are at least six different market types. You should understand how your system will perform in each of them.
     1. Bull volatile
     2. Bull quiet
     3. Sideways volatile
     4. Sideways quiet
     5. Bear quiet (almost doesn’t exist)
     6. Bear volatile
33. It’s easy to design a Holy Grail system (one with a high System Quality Number score) for any one market type listed above.
34. It’s insane to expect that trading system to work in all market types.
35. The biggest mistake people make is to try to design one system to fit all markets.
36. You should only trade your system in the market type for which it was designed.
37. Good traders understand the big picture, know how to measure it, and become aware when the situation changes.
38. Media and academia know none of this and will not teach it to you.
39. For each market type, you need a large sample size to estimate what the population is for that system.
40. You also need to do Monte Carlo simulations with your system’s R-multiples to get a better idea of what to expect in the future. This will work if the sample you draw from is similar to the population.

What these rules seem to have in common is a statistical approach to markets
that relies on thinking about reward-to-risk rather than being right. They also
emphasize that great performance is a function of the market, your system, and you.

Level II
PSYCHOLOGICALTRANSFORMATIONS TO HELP YOU FUNCTION AT A SUPERIOR LEVEL WITHIN THE MATRIX
レベル2 マトリックスを理解し、自分自身を再プログラミングする

[ケメコ注]
トレーダー(つまり自分自身)についての正しい知識
トレードにおける心理的メンタル的な要因について
[ケメコ注ここまで]

You already understand that beliefs form a filter through which you determine reality. It’s like the movie The Matrix, only the robotic programming seems real and it’s done through your beliefs. When you realize this, you can systematically begin to examine every belief and determine whether or not it serves you. Is each belief useful for operating as a trader in the Matrix?

Ultimately, all beliefs in some way limit you because they separate you from Oneness. To the extent that you must operate within the Matrix, however, you are at a huge advantage when you understand how you are programmed. Just like Neo, the main character of the movie, you can start a process of reprogramming yourself by getting rid of nonuseful beliefs and constantly adopting more useful ones. As you begin to do this, your whole life will change, and your success will blossom.

Beliefs are easy to change when you find one that’s not useful. All you do is notice that it is not useful and find something that is more useful. This is only possible, however, when the nonuseful belief doesn’t have charge or emotion linked to it. A charged belief is one for which some strong, negative emotion comes up when you think about it. When a nonuseful belief has charge associated with it, you must remove the charge through some sort of feeling release.

THE BASIS FOR THE MATRIX
What’s a belief? Anything you or I say reflects one or more beliefs, including this sentence. For example, I could make the statement, “I am a trader.” That’s a belief about who I am, or at least who I believe myself to be. I’ve said in this book that my mission is helping other people transform through a financial metaphor. Again, that’s a belief—only this time, it reflects one of my values. I could say it’s possible to make 100 percent trading every year. That’s a belief about capability.

Understanding the Impact of Beliefs Will Change Your Life
If you’re new to this idea, it might be difficult for you to fully grasp, but when you finally get it, your life will change forever. Let’s start out by talking about how most of us form beliefs in the first place. People do not act upon direct, real-world information; they act upon information that passes through neurological, social, and individual filters.* Neurological filters are defined by the limits of the sensory mechanisms through which they receive their information. For example, we can only “see” visible light or “hear” audible sound. We cannot detect most of the energy waves around us. We can feel the difference between two points only a millimeter or so apart on the skin of our fingertips and yet not feel the difference between two points as far apart as an inch on the skin of our back. We don’t perceive the “real world” because we’re only wired to be able to detect a small portion of it. What you believe about the universe begins with the sensory information available to you through your neurological filters.

The second type of filter we use is the social filter. These are filters or beliefs that are shared by a common group of people. They include language, shared perceptions, and moral values. What you believe is strongly influenced by the social filters you wear.

The graphs, charts, and statistical methods shared by investors, or even specific groups of traders, also constitute social filters. For example, people who use Gann magic numbers or Gann angles3 will have a different perspective on the market from those who do not. Similarly, investors who use stochastics will develop different expectations about the market from those who do not use them. And if you don’t know what stochastics or Gann concepts are, you’ll have a different experience reading this paragraph from those who use them regularly.

Finally, each individual has his own personal history, and that history provides a set of unique filters or beliefs through which he views the world. This means that no two people will perceive the world in the same way. Your unique experiences shape your beliefs about the world. The investor who has initial success in bear markets may only feel comfortable in bear markets because the model she’s developed allows her to expect success in such down markets. She may not feel comfortable in bull markets because she has no experience of success in up markets.

There are all sorts of beliefs. You have thousands of them, and you started forming them as soon as you learned language and began interacting with the people who surrounded you. Those beliefs created your reality.

Your personal history may allow you to see rich possibilities in the world of investments. On the other hand, your personal history may restrict your ability to see choices and options. The person who is preoccupied with trades that got away is not able to see/hear/feel all of the present opportunities that are available.

I’ve often said that you never trade the market itself; you trade your beliefs about the market. What is the market? It’s billions of ticks coming into a central place to buy and sell; it’s the emotions and thought processes that go into the orders. But you don’t trade that. Instead, you look at a chart—probably with a lot of indicators. You probably form some beliefs about the chart or the indicators, and you trade those beliefs.

We spend a lot of time eliciting and examining our beliefs. Part of that process is to figure what our beliefs get us into, what they keep us out of, and how they limit us.

You Are the Awareness of Thoughts that Flow through You
Eckhart Tolle asks people to meditate simply by (1) watching their breath, (2) paying attention to the silence, (3) feeling the aliveness of the inner body, or (4) being aware of the now. When you do this for a while (any of the four methods), you may notice several things:

First, you’ll notice that thoughts begin to flow through the mind. If you just notice it, that’s all that happens—thoughts flow. They are just objects in consciousness until you begin to identify with them. At that point, you might think that you are the thoughts, or that you actively thought them. But did you? Did you make any conscious effort to think the last thought that flowed through your mind, or did it just come? And if it just came, where did it come from? Are you the thinker of thoughts or just the observer?

Eventually, if you do this enough, you’ll begin to notice that you are not the thoughts at all; you are the awareness of the thoughts. This is a very powerful position to be in—understanding that thoughts just happen, and you are nothing more than the awareness of those thoughts.

Most of us, though, are not in that particular place. Instead, we think that we are the creator of the thoughts or that we actually are the thought.

Belief Hierarchy
1. Environment beliefs are about what is observations about the world: “Markets tend
2. Behavioral beliefs are about your behavior: “I trade trending markets.”
3. Capability beliefs are about what you can or cannot do: “I can make 100 percent per year trading trends.”
4. Value beliefs are about what’s most important to you: “It’s important to catch the trend.”
5. Identity beliefs are about who you are and usually begin with the words I am: “I am a trend-follower.”
6. Spiritual beliefs are (or could be) beyond you and imply how the universe is organized: “God loves trend-followers.”

The identity level determines who a person thinks she is. It’s one’s mission in life. Beliefs at this level, which usually begin with the words “I am” or “I feel,” might include the following examples:
・I’m useless when it comes to trading.
・I am a skilled trader.
・I’d feel better about myself if I had more money (this one implies that the person doesn’t feel good about herself).

Problems I call personal issues occur at this level. If you find that you have some emotion that comes up repeatedly in your trading, it’s probably a symptom of a personal issue.

The spiritual level determines one’s overall philosophy in life. In essence, you have a few simple choices about what you believe the nature of the universe to be. Whatever you pick tends to determine your overall outlook in life. It also tends to determine who you think you are.

Every religion imparts spiritual beliefs. Your particular beliefs tend to support and comfort you. However, some beliefs support strong self-esteem and promote trading skills, while others do not.

Changing Your Beliefs
When you realize that your beliefs control your reality, you suddenly have the opportunity to completely change your experience of the world by changing your beliefs. But how do you change your beliefs? It’s actually pretty simple. Unless a belief is charged with emotion, you can change it with the following simple procedure. I call it the Belief Examination Paradigm.
1. Recognize the belief
2. Ask yourself, Is this a deliberately chosen belief, or did someone give it to me? If it is not yours, then ask, Who gave it to me?
3. Ask yourself, What does this belief get me into? Another way of phrasing this, borrowed from Byron Katie,8 would be What happens when I have that belief? Come up with between 5 and 10 things.
4. Ask yourself, What does it get me out of? This tends to be a more difficult question because you’re seeing it from the perspective of someone who has the belief—you. So perhaps another question you could use, also borrowed from Byron Katie, is Who would I be without this belief? Incidentally, one of the answers to that question for almost every belief you can think of is usually, “less separated.”
5. Next, you need to ask yourself, Is this belief useful? If you don’t do a good job with question four, you are likely to think that most of your beliefs are useful.
6. If the belief is not useful, you can usually change it just by finding a more useful belief and substituting it. However, that only works when the belief doesn’t have any charge holding it in place. When there is a charge, when stored fear or anger or some other negative emotion is holding it in place, you must release the charge before you can substitute a more useful belief.

Everything Has the Meaning You Give It
Let’s say the price of a stock goes down, and five different people experience a loss. Chances are that each one of them will take away a different meaning from that loss.
Trader A: “My stop took me out. I’m wrong 52 percent of the time and it was just another loss. I’m proud of myself for executing my trading plan perfectly.”
Trader B: “Why did I listen to that recommendation? He’s wrong again. I never should have listened to him. When will I ever learn?”
Trader C: “Wow, I’m down 70 percent in my account after that loss. I’ve lost nearly everything. I’m a stupid idiot.”
Trader D: “Boy, I’m glad I only risked $400 on that position. I wasn’t that sure about it anyway.”
Trader E: “The expectancy of my system under these market types is 1.2R. After 10 trades, I’ll probably be up 12R. This was just one trade on the way to completing all 10.”

Notice that one event occurs, but five different people each assign a different meaning to it.

Each belief is likely to produce a different reality in different people, just because of the meaning given to the words.

Creating Your Own World

Psychological Tharp Think Principles
1. You are responsible for everything that happens to you. When you understand this, you can correct your mistakes. We call this "respondability."
2. When you are not committed, you tend to run into obstacles and do a dance with them instead of going around them and moving on to your committed goal.
3. If you are not committed to doing the necessary work on yourself and on your trading, you will not succeed.
4. Do what you love. If that doesn’t include trading, you should not be a trader.
5. You are a crowd inside, and that crowd is who you think you are.
6. Parts have good intentions, but they start doing their own thing and cause conflict.
7. You can eliminate that conflict through parts negotiation or TiM.
8. You must understand your identity and spiritual beliefs and determine whether or not they're useful.
9. You can change any belief that isn't useful simply by understanding that it isn't useful—unless that belief has stored charge in it.
10. If the belief has stored charge in it, you need to remove the charge through feeling release.
11. You need to continually monitor and work on yourself to trade well.
12. When you discover a major issue blocking you, you need to know how to solve the issue and avoid doing a dance with it.
13. Your internal guidance is your best friend. Learn to use it.
14. But don't mistake "into wishing" for intuition.

Nine Steps to Mastering Yourself
[ケメコ注]
「我が名はレギオン」
人はみな”多重人格者”
いろんなパートを演じ分けて
人間関係を築いたり
社会生活を送つてゐる
それらのパートを統合する必要がある
[ケメコ注ここまで]

Step 1: Learn That You Are a Crowd Inside
Ask the trader part which other parts tend to be involved in trading. It’ll probably tell you. When a new part comes up, don’t forget to ask it about other parts it knows about.

Step 2: Get 25 to 30 Identity-Level Beliefs from Each Part
The result of this exercise should be a list of at least 200 identity-level beliefs, because I’m assuming you have at least 10 parts. Let’s say the following parts seem to be involved in trading: (1) trader, (2) researcher, (3) excitement, (4) self- criticism, (5) don’t lose money, (6) procrastinator, and (7) perfectionist. You also know about a (8) fear part, (9) a father part (representing your dad), and (10) a part that likes to play golf. Okay, that’s 10 parts.

Your next job is to jump into each part (allow that part to take charge) and have it give you 20 to 30 beliefs about who it thinks you are. These would all be in the form of beliefs that start with the words “I am.” Let’s say your trader part comes up with 25 beliefs.
Here are a few examples:
1. I am a trader.
2. I am a trend follower.
3. I am a risk taker.
4. I am someone who takes on risk only when the reward is potentially much bigger.
5. I am careful.
6. I am a planner.
7. I am a rule follower.
8. I am lazy when it comes to doing my homework.
9. I am prone to making mistakes.
10. I am organized.

Now you ask your perfectionist part, and it comes up with 18 beliefs.
Here are some examples:
1. I’m someone who likes to be right.
2. I’m never satisfied; I want better.
3. I’m critical of what is.
4. I’m very detail-oriented.
5. I’m someone who won’t act until I’m sure.
6. I’m always working.
7. I’m always thinking about how to make it better.
8. I’m concerned about what others think.
9. I’m always watching the trader and the researcher because they don’t like me.
10. I’m hopeless.

Now complete the exercise for each part until you have at least 200 beliefs about yourself written down. You’ll notice that beliefs of one part can easily clash with the beliefs of another part, but when you have them all written down, you’ll have a good idea of what’s running your life. You’ll begin to understand the matrix holding you in place, and you’ll have an opportunity to move beyond it.

Step 3: Do a Belief Examination Paradigm on Each of Your Beliefs
Give at least five answers when you get to the question, “What does it get me into?” Also give at least five answers to the question, “What does it get me out of?”

Step 3a: Keep Your Useful Beliefs
Once you complete your list, ask yourself, Is the belief useful? If the belief is useful, then keep it. You’ll find that many of them are not. It’s when you start to replace nonuseful beliefs with useful ones that you really begin to see change in your life.

Step 3b: Replace Your Uncharged Nonuseful Beliefs
You’ll find that nonuseful beliefs without charge on them are easy to replace once you recognize their lack of utility. For example, “Not acting until you are sure” might be replaced with “Act when the reward-to-risk ratio is heavily in your favor.” It’s easily done, unless the first belief has a lot of fear associated with it.

Step 3c: Find the Charge on the Remaining Beliefs
You’ll probably find that at least half of your nonuseful beliefs have a powerful emotion attached to them. When that’s the case, list it and the associated emotion and move on.

Step 4: Learn about Projection and Your Shadow Self
Once you’ve completed step 3, find your shadow parts. A shadow part is a part of you that you’ve disowned because you find it so hateful or repulsive. It’s still a part of you, though, and will show up when you least expect it. How do you find it? Think about all the types of people you dislike and why you dislike them. Those people represent your shadow parts.

Find at least five shadow parts and identify 20 to 30 beliefs from each of them. Chances are that most of the beliefs of these parts will have charge that you need to release.

Step 5: Work on the Charge through Feeling- Release Exercises
The next step is to list the stored charges attached to your nonuseful beliefs and apply one of the feeling release methods:

  1. Welcoming the feeling
    Think about one of the beliefs you’d like to get rid of but cannot. Let’s say there is some rejection involved in that belief. It’s charged with rejection. Think about the belief and releasing it. When you notice rejection coming up, welcome it. Open your arms wide and just welcome the feelings you have. I personally find this exercise to be quite powerful. Feelings are meant to pass through you, not be stored inside you.

  2. Just releasing it
    The second exercise amounts to releasing the feelings as they come up. Just feel it and let it go. It’s that simple. Actually, the only time it is difficult is when you resist doing it. The resistance magnifies the feeling, and you then have to deal with the resistance. If the feeling seems like a category 5 hurricane, it means you are resisting it strongly. Notice that you are resisting it; then just welcome it and let go of the resistance. Once you have done that, releasing the feeling should be easy.

  3. The park bench exercise
    I advocate using the third method—the park bench technique—when a feeling you are resisting is dominating your life. Let’s say a loved one died and you are preoccupied with grief. Let’s say you are spending 15 hours a day grieving over your loss. If this is happening, I recommend the park bench technique, in which you actively commit to the feeling. You are spending 15 hours a day with it, so why not commit one hour each day to really feel the feeling?

    Find a neutral spot, such as a park bench. Sit down on the bench and commit to feeling the feeling as strongly as you can for one hour. What you’ll find is that you probably can do it for 20 minutes, but then the feeling gets boring and starts to dissipate. However, you must do it for an hour. After the first day you may find that you are not thinking about it so much.

    The next day you decide to spend 45 minutes on the bench thinking about the feeling. And after 15 minutes it gets boring, but you must do the whole 45 minutes.

    The next day you reduce it to 30 minutes, then to 20, then to 10, and then down to 5 minutes. Pretty soon it seems to go away instantly, and you are not thinking about it all day. Why does this happen? It happens because you’ve been willing to feel it actively.

    Now look at the beliefs you want to change that have a charge on them. Practice one or more of the feeling release techniques just recommended on the charge behind those beliefs. Pretty soon, the charge will be gone from the nonuseful beliefs and you’ll simply be able to replace them all with much more useful beliefs.

Step 6: Do a Life Review and List the Beliefs That Come Up
The next step you might consider will take 20 to 30 minutes for each year of your life, so if you’re 40 years old, plan on setting aside about 14 to 20 hours for the exercise.

Here’s what you do. For each year of your life, write down everything you can remember about what happened. Write down all your memories. It’s okay to check with people who were around when you were very young to refresh your memories. As you complete each year of memories, write down any significant beliefs you think you might have formed at that age. When you finish, run each belief through the various steps listed above: 1. Repeat the Belief Examination Paradigm for each belief. 2. Replace non useful beliefs. 3. Release stored charge.

Step 7: Make a List of Your Problems and Find the Root Cause (Beliefs and Feelings
List each of your problems. Notice the feelings at the root of each problem and the beliefs behind them.

For example, suppose you decide that you waste too much time watching television. It’s a form of escape. Next time you decide to watch television, don’t —at least not at first. Instead, notice the feeling going on inside that is telling you to watch television. You might call it boredom. You might find that you are anxious and want to escape. You might be lonely. Or you might notice some feeling in your body for which you have no label at all. What are the beliefs behind that feeling? What would happen if you did a feeling release on that feeling? Notice, too, your reaction to even doing that. Perhaps that’s something you need to work on as well. Now you are really beginning to see the matrix that controls you and your behavior.

Step 8: Get in Touch with Your Internal Guidance
Start having a daily written conversation with your Inner Guidance. Ask your Higher Self a question, and wait for an answer. When something comes, write it down. Keep doing this every day, and notice any issues that come up. Work on the issues as they appear. When your internal guidance is well established, it will lead you through this process.

Step 9: Work to Eliminate Parts, or to at Least Get Them to Work Together with You
Deal with conflicting parts of you.

Exercise: Have a Parts Party
Try the following exercise to get an idea about some of your parts. Go to bed with a writing tablet and a pen or pencil. Before you fall asleep, bring up the part of you that bought this book. It’s either your trader/investor part or the part of you that’s curious about self-development. Beginning with that part, ask what its positive intention is for you and thank it for helping you. Then ask it what other parts are inside—parts you might be in conflict with on a regular basis. If you’re talking to your trader part, it might bring up your perfectionist part, your excitement part, your conservative part, your researcher part, your fear part, your “get a real job” part, and probably a number of others. Now, ask each part, “What are you trying to do for me? What’s your positive intention for me?” You might not get any answers immediately, but that’s okay. Be ready to write down what might come up. The primary objective of this exercise is to find out who is in there and to come up with at least two parts that are in conflict. If you find two conflicting parts, you can do the next exercise and negotiate between your parts.

Parts Negotiation Exercise
1. Identify two parts that are in conflict.

What you’re looking for is a statement such as, “I want to X, but something prevents me from doing X.” Your conflict might be as simple as, “I want to be a trader, but I never seem to have the courage to make a trade.” These are just two examples. There are many statements that indicate internal conflict.

Here are some of the most common conflicting parts:
・The part that wants to trade, and the part that can’t pull the trigger.
・The part that wants to trade, and the part that wants excitement.
・The part that wants to trade, and the part that wants to find the perfect trading system.
・The part that wants to trade, and the part that refuses to take a loss.
・The part that wants to trade, and the part that says you don’t have enough time.
・The part that wants to trade, and the part that says you should do something productive.

2. Put one part in one hand and one part in the other and notice what they look like. You might be making up what they look like (i.e., a white mist, me with a cowboy hat, a little boy of nine, etc.)

3. Become one of your parts and ask it about the other part. Get that part’s opinion of the other part. What does it do? How are they in conflict? What does it think about the other part? Get all of the details. Finally, ask the part, “What’s your positive intention for me?” Be sure to get this; it’s the basis for negotiation.

4. Do the same for the other part. Get a full description of what it thinks about the other part in the other hand, and be sure to end with the positive intention of that part. At this point, you should have the positive intention of each part.
a. Be sure that you have intentions (to make money trading) and not behaviors (help you trade).
b. Also, be sure the intention of each part is positive (“I want to protect you from fear” vs. “I want to screw up your life”). Every part was established for a positive intention. Thus, a fear part that sees fear in everything is probably just trying to protect you, even though it might not seem that way.

5. Go inside again and ask to communicate with your creative part. Ask the creative part to come up with three ways to meet the intention of both parts. If one part seems particularly negative, find things that the negative part can do to meet its positive intention.
a. A fear part can engage in feeling-release rather than bring fear up for you constantly.
b. A conservative part can develop a sound business plan for you or be in charge of risk control.
c. An excitement part can go skydiving on the weekends rather than do stupid things that impact your trading.


7. When the two parts agree, ask if any other part objects to the agreements.

8. If one part objects, join the two agreeing parts on one hand and bring the objecting part out on the other hand. Restart the negotiations, beginning with step two.

Level III
MOVING BEYOND THE MATRIX BY TRANSFORMING YOUR LEVELOF CONSCIOUSNESS
レベル3 マトリックスを超えてトレードする

[ケメコ注]
意識や自己意識レベルにおける変革
[ケメコ注ここまで]

What exactly is consciousness? Consciousness might be considered awareness, or self-awareness, or the mental state out of which you operate. For example, a trader would be much better off trading out of “acceptance” (much higher level of consciousness) than “fear” or “greed” (both low levels of consciousness). In one sense, the level of consciousness, actually measures the Truth of something. Low levels of consciousness are steeped in illusion whereas higher levels of consciousness tend to move out of illusion toward the Truth.

Think about these different levels and how you might trade at each level. How do you think you’d perform as a trader if you were feeling “guilt,” “shame,” “fear,” “grief,” “anger,” or any of the other lower emotions? It should be clear that you wouldn’t do that well. You need to be at a minimum level of “acceptance” to expect to have much chance of successfully trading the markets. You can also think about levels of consciousness from this perspective. Do you want to know your level of consciousness? Then ask yourself, “Where do I spend most of my time?” Can you elevate your consciousness so that you are at least at a level of acceptance, which would allow you to accept both wins and losses?

Our goal is to help traders take large leaps forward in consciousness. Think about the simple Level II transformation of making a belief change. Now, imagine again the impact of getting rid of around 5,000 nonuseful beliefs in a year, especially if half of them were charged beliefs and the charge is now gone. That probably would raise your consciousness several hundred points.

Similarly, think about the impact of merging two parts into one—whether through conflict resolution. This too can have a major impact on your life. Now think about getting rid of perhaps 500 parts. Depending on how many parts you’re composed of, you’d be very close to whole. Imagine the impact that would have on your level of consciousness.

Thoughts on Raising Your Level of Consciousness

Your next step is to continue the process long enough to raise your level of consciousness to the point where you can see what’s happening without a lot of internal interference, at which point trading will become easy for you. All of the following should help you do that:
・What would happen if you transformed What would happen if you transformed or eliminated 5,000 major beliefs? You can do that through the belief examination paradigm.
・What would happen if you gradually eliminated the crowd inside you until the internal chatter in your head actually stopped? You can do that through conflict resolution.
・What would happen if you could actually observe what the market is doing right now with no interference of any kind?

Some Exercises for Trading in the Now

Let’s go through a series of exercises on getting to know yourself. First, close your eyes and just watch your thoughts for about a minute. Notice each thought that comes up. Notice what happens to it, and notice what happens after it disappears. When one thought goes, you might even observe where the next thought seems to come from if you can. Do it now for a minute.

So what happened when you did that? Did your thoughts tend to slow down? Did you at any time notice the silence between the thoughts? Did you feel a little more relaxed at the end of the exercise? Write down your observations in the space below.

Most people think that they are their thoughts, but if you do this exercise long enough, you might begin to notice that each thought isn’t you. Those thoughts merely pass through you. As Eckhart Tolle generally says, through such meditations you begin to realize that you are not your thoughts, bu the awareness of your thoughts.

Now, let’s do the same exercise for a little longer, for three minutes. Pay close attention to the thoughts that seem to flow through you. Be very focused, and really watch them. Again, at the end of the three minutes, write down what happened. Did your thoughts stop or slow down? Did you go into a state of no- thought or silence? Did you fall asleep? Did you feel peaceful? Did you feel joyful? What did you feel? Again, write down your observations.

Perhaps you felt something like peace, joy, profound awareness, or even just silence. When you do the exercise again, notice any such feeling that might arise. Again, it could be something as simple as silence or nothingness.

Let’s do the same exercise again, but this time for five minutes. Throughout the exercise, notice your thoughts and where they seem to come from and go to. Notice any silence that might occur. Notice any feelings that might come up, while you’re doing the exercise, even if it’s just a feeling of silence or awareness. Just watch and notice whatever is there. You don’t have to do anything. There is nothing for you to do. You don’t have to control anything. There is nothing to control. Just notice what happens and watch it. When a feeling comes up, observe it and nothing else. Again, do this for five minutes. At the end of the five minutes, open your eyes and notice that the feeling is probably still there. Write down your observations.

The awareness, the silence or the feeling that you feel is who you really are. Welcome to your Higher Self. Chances are that it didn’t take you years to find. You are that Awareness. You are that feeling of peace, joy, or bliss. Okay, this time let’s repeat the same exercise for about 10 minutes. Notice when you become aware of a feeling. When it occurs—whether it’s a sense of deep silence, awareness, or whatever—just focus on it. Observe it and appreciate it, because it’s You. Who else could it be?

At the end of 10 minutes, open your eyes and look at something while staying aware of this feeling. Look slowly about the room, noticing what is there. Look at each object you see, one at a time, keeping your awareness on this feeling.

Now walk around the room. Notice what you experience. Notice that you can keep the feeling with you. It might transform itself—people have been known to spontaneously laugh, for example—but just notice the feeling as you actively walk around the room. When you finish, write down what you observed.

If you feel lighter, more peaceful, more joyful, or even more aware, congratulate yourself. You’ve achieved what some people take years to achieve in meditation. In the process, you’ve become more aware of who you really are —more aware of your Self.

Now ask yourself, what do you think would happen if you were to trade from this state? I’m not giving you an answer. This is a question to ponder for yourself. If you’re still feeling the feeling you noticed during the exercise, pay attention to it as you read the next section.

Trading in the Now

I believe that trading is not about prediction, but about finding decent reward-to-risk trades. But, of course, that’s my belief. Do you think you could just watch the markets and trade those moves and make money if you were in the state you got into during the last exercises? If you do, I’ve illustrated both the power of your beliefs and of your state of consciousness.

What I am saying is that trading in this state, when you have a proven trading system, and then following all the other suggestions in this book will help you tremendously. Furthermore, you’ll be able to see the markets for what they are. You’ll know what’s happening right now.

Level IV Transformation

The final level of transformation occurs when “you” seem to disappear and operate only in the now. You may have entered such a state after the meditation exercises you just completed.

When a Level IV transformation happens, the following are true:
・Thoughts occur, but you do not identify with them at all.
・Seeing and listening occur, but there is no one there as the seer or the listener.
・Doing occurs, but it is automatic; there is no doer.
・The body is there, but you realize that it is not you. You are not your body.
・The mind is there, but you realize that it is not you. You are not your mind.
・Everything happens automatically.
・You understand that you have (or had) many personalities, but none of them are you. In fact, you now understand that there is no person there at all.
・You are existence, consciousness, bliss.
・The whole world is your family.
・When I use the word “you” in these statements, it’s misleading, because that “you” is only who you formerly thought you were. You no longer exist because you are one with everything.

What’s important about this level of transformation is that anyone who achieves it (although it’s not so much an achievement as a realization) can trade effortlessly and make money easily if that’s what they’re moved to do.

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中島敦「名人伝」
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本書への賛辞

「『タープ的思考』はトレードテクノロジーの最先端を走ってきた。今こそ、真実の世界に足を踏み入れ、トレードに変革をもたらすときだ。彼の『聖杯』システムはトレードの新たな領域と深い関係があることが分かってくるだろう。そして、トレードのエッジは精神性のなかにあることも分かってくるだろう。トレードを次のレベルへと発展させたい人にとっての必読書だ」
――リビー・アダムス博士(インターナショナル・アカデミー・オブ・セルフ・ナレッジの最高責任者)

「本書は自己の心理はあなたの敵ではなくあなたの見方であることを教えてくれるものだ。本書はまたリスクの考え方とマネジメントの方法も教えてくれる。勝てるトレードシステムを開発したいのなら本書を読むことだ。私は本書をトレーダーのトップ10の必読書に加えた」
――レーン・J・メンデルゾーン(トレーダープラネット・ドットコムの創始者)

「偉大なシステムとは、同じ方法を使えば同じ結果を再現できるシステムのことを言う。バン・タープのシステムはまさにこんなシステムだ。実際の人間が実際の結果を出す。われわれが探していたのはこんなシステムではないだろうか。市場で常にお金を稼ぎたいのなら、本書を読んで自分を変革することだ」
――D・ジェイニー・ギル(マイクロソフトの元世界調達上級部長)

「本書はバンのこれまでの本とは趣を異にする。これは彼自身の旅を描いたものだ。トレードや自己変革の話を通して、『トレードメタファーを通じての変革』の意味が分かってくる。インスピレーションに富み、実践的ガイダンスと応用法も教えてくれる本書は、あなたとあなたのトレードの改善に大いに役立つはずだ」
――マルコム・プライヤー(『ファイナンシャル・スプレッド・ベッティング・ハンドブック』の著者)

「成功するトレードとはトレードそのものよりもそのトレーダーと大きな関係がある。このことをずっと以前に発見したタープは、高次元の意識状態にあるトレーダーたちはトレードだけでなく、人生においても成功者になる確率が高いことをわれわれに教えてくれる。この新たな意識レベルに達するにはどうすればよいのか。物理的、感情的、精神的幸福を手に入れるにはどうすればよいのか。それを知りたい人は本書を読むことだ。本書はあらゆる人にとっての必読書だ。特にスピリチュアルコミュニティーの友人たちに勧めたい本だ。物質と精神との関係をかくも深く分析したバン・タープの洞察力には恐れ入るばかりだ」
――スチュアート・ムーニー(『アメリカン・ブッダ』の著者兼デイトレーダー)

「トレードのメンタル面に移行するのは私にとっては簡単だ。しかし、ほかの人にとってはそれほど容易なことではない。そこで本書の出番というわけだ。自分を成功から遠ざけるバイアスや信念、環境といったものを克服してトレーダーとして成功した人々の話には共感できる。彼らはいかにしてこれらを克服したのだろうか。それはすべて本書に書かれている」
――トム・バッソ

邦訳監修者まえがき
本書はトレーダーのメンタルトレーニングで有名なバン・K・タープ博士が著した“Trading Beyond the Matrix : The Red Pill for Traders and Investors”の邦訳である。タープ博士が書いたものの邦訳としてはすでに『新版 魔術師たちの心理学』『魔術師たちの投資術』『タープ博士のトレード学校 ポジションサイジング入門』の3冊がパンローリングから刊行されている。トレードの心理を扱った相場書は希少なので、これらを手に取ったことのある方も多いことだろう。しかし、本書をそれらの延長線上に位置づけて読んだら仰天することになる。なぜなら、本書は相場書というよりは、広義のセルフヘルプとスピリチュアリティ(霊性)に関して書かれた啓蒙書だからである。  一般に私たちはだれでも認知バイアスを持っている。これには例外はなく、人によって程度が異なるだけである。それが極端な場合は社会生活に支障を来すこともあるが、ほとんどの場合は特に問題とはならない。日常生活では合理的な判断・行動が常に必要なわけではないからだ。だがマーケットにおいては、他者が合理的な行動を取るなかで自分が非合理的な行動を取れば、意図せざる損失を被ることになる。認知的不協和の発生である。この不快感を軽減する方法はいくつかあるが、本質的に問題を解決しようとすれば、自分自身もしくは自分の行動を変えるしかない。
 実際に自分自身を変えるのは大変で成人ではほとんど不可能であるが、もし問題がトレードに限定されているのなら、表面的な行動さえ変えればよいのだから話は簡単である。機関投資家の運用現場では、これを組織デザインと分業制度、ミッションのエージェンシー化によって解決している。これは日本人が得意とする分野で、したがって各担当者のメンタルな問題はパフォーマンスにはまったく影響を与えない。一方で、自分ひとりですべてをこなさなければならない個人投資家の場合は、多くは数学(特に統計学)をはじめとした科学的な思考を心がけることでもって、トレードにおける自分の行動を律してきた。
 しかし著者らは第三の道を選んだ。認知的不協和の存在から来る不快を軽減するために、プロセスを変えるのではなく自分の認識体系の方を入れ替えるのである。著者らはその認識体系を「信念(belief)」、それを矯正する新たな認知バイアスを「タープ的思考」と呼び、この原理に通じれば精神が解放され、神と対話することになる(らしい)。本書は、トレードにおけるメンタルトレーニングの領域をはるかに超えて行き着くところまで行ってしまった人たちの記録である。私自身はここに書かれたような超自然的なモノの存在を信じないし、たかがゼニ儲けのために神様を持ち出すのはむしろ不謹慎なんじゃないのか?といった疑問も感じるのだが、唯一絶対神を持たない私たち日本人と違って、彼らには科学よりも宗教のほうが、自らを統制するものとしては受け入れやすいのかもしれない。