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I’m reading Van Tharp’s latest book, Trading Beyond the Matrix. I just started it so this will not be a complete review — expect that in the future, though.

But I am already intrigued.

Tharp believes that you don’t trade or invest in the market; you trade or invest in the beliefs of the market. Those beliefs are yours to control, or to allow them to control you. Hence, trading for Tharp is almost a yoga, a mental connection between brain and spirit. Indeed, there are yogic paths that stress mental exercises and meditation exercises.

But we don’t think of trading as a spiritual act. In fact, it’s treated almost as an act of defilement. Our society has twisted views on wealth and earning wealth. We praise and hate the practice. The structure of our tax system treats earning money as a sin by punishing — not rewarding — you for earning more money. It’s the ultimate sin and deserves the ultimate sin tax. Notice: there’s no progressive sales tax on cigarettes or alcohol based on use or over-use.

Tharp though approaches it almost as a Zen philosopher, who sees the extraordinary in the ordinary and the ordinary in the extraordinary. By consciously watching your thoughts and beliefs, the trader is learning about himself. As he learns about his mind, he is learning about the universe.

I sort of saw this coming from Tharp. The last book of his that I read — Super Trader — contained the prerequisite number of charts and graphs, along with trading tips, but did not shy away from spiritual matters. Tharp believes they are closely connected.

Once I’m finished I’ll try to post a review, or summary, of Trading Beyond the Matrix.

Resources:

Tharp Institute

Trade Your Way to Freedom

Super Trader

Dreams Come True, Great Books, Investing, Money, Online Investing AI, Success beyond the matrix, spirituality, tharp, trading, van tharp

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Don’t blame the media. Don’t blame the government. Blame Darwin and the occasional saber-toothed tiger.

We are surrounded by bad news because of evolution. Our brains developed to deal with an overwhelming amount of stimuli, mostly in the forms of threats to our safety and acquiring food and shelter. We watched for bears and worried about our next meal. Good news, quite frankly, wasn’t important.

This affects us today. When you’re on the freeway, do you stop and gawk at the motorist who successfully exits the highway? Or, do we slow down and gawk at the car accident at the side of the road? The media promotes the unusual and trends that threaten us before it shows us the common and trends that benefit us, even though, as we’ll see, there are far more opportunities than threats out there.

I believe this gives us a distorted picture of the world — and, in fact, may keep us mired down psychologically. We focus on the bad and ignore the good. (Although, to play my own devil’s advocate, it may also keep us from being complacent.)

Anyway. This week, I’m passing on links to prove my point.

Good things are happening, even if you believe your life, your world, and your reality sucks.

From Reuters, data indicate growing economic momentum.

There’s good news about job growth on Yahoo News.

Global poverty is shrinking — Pro Bono News.

From working in a sweatshop to being a billionaire, on the Good News Network.

Leukemia cure in one study — may just be the beginning, according to story at ABC News.

Quantum computing researchers are making impressive discoveries, according to one of the companies on the forefront of this new industry.

Exoskeletons can increase worker productivity. That’s from Next Big Future.

3D Printing? Yeah, that’s coming to, says the Wall Street Journal.

And lots more…

Business Strategy, Dreams Come True, Internet, Money, Success, US Economy evolution, fear, good news, greed, Success

Any scientist will tell you that when you see a pattern, there must be an underlying cause.

In the past few decades and especially the last few years, we’ve seen a pattern of businesses, governments and institutions that were too big to fail… fail.

AIG. GM. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Greece. Spain. Do I need to go on?

Remember, if there is a pattern, there is probably a cause. In fact, there are a few reasons why groups that can’t fail inevitably do fail.

One reason that too-big-to-fail become most-likely-to-fail is because these organizations believe these organizations take on unnecessary risks because they are convinced that their bigness or smartness — or whatever other belief backs their infallibility – makes them immune from the consequences.

Most of the leaders of these organizations also believe that if they are too-big-to-fail, someone will bail out their bad decisions. If you believe that packaging risky mortgage loans has no consequence, or that you will eventually be bailed out, why not take that risk?

Too-big-to-fail organizations don’t do their homework. It’s like the student who whizzes through a few easy courses and then is suddenly confronted with completely new material. What do they do? Usually, they fail those first few tests until they either spend more time and effort on the new material, or they drop out.

Some groups also believe that they can predict the future because their a series of assessments proved accurate. But market conditions and economic realities are always morphing — for good and for bad.

The truth is, when we fail to let people fail, we create the seeds of even greater failure.

Just ask Joe Schumpeter.

Investing, Money, Success, US Economy economics, fail, failure, Joseph Schumpeter

It has been quite interesting to watch Bitcoin as it has gone through one bubble, and consistently risen since. Many people thought that Bitcoin was finished after its stratospheric rise in 2011, and it’s subsequent collapse to $3. Can Bitcoin survive such a massive devaluation?

Image courtesy Bitcoin Charts

Recently Bitcoin has achieved quite a bit of attention, because of WordPress.com announcing that they will accept payment in Bitcoin. More recently, Reddit has decided to accept Bitcoin. The more interesting (and perhaps) exciting development is that you can now buy pizza with bitcoins.

Read more…

Accelerating Technology, Dreams Come True, Internet, Investing, Money, Success, US Economy bitcoin, currency, debt, defense, future, gold, government, Medicare, Money, silver, social security, Success, technology, wars

For many of us, mastery is a journey, not a destination.

Mastery is not just about doing something well, it’s doing something effortlessly well and doing something so well that you add to that field or profession. Think Mozart or Picasso.

There’s something more about mastery  though. It’s more than a gift because there are those who are gifted with skills and knowledge, but never truly develop those skills.

Maybe it’s just too easy.

Mastery is something more than a gift or innate ability, something intangible.

To become a master, you must know yourself and you must know how to let your gift use you. Hidden under your psyche lies the motivations that drive you to mastery.

It’s that last step that causes most trouble. People who have certain abilities are channeled into careers, then realize they are not satisfied in those professions. We call it burnout.

Robert Greene in his new book, Mastery, says:

“Your strategy must be twofold: first, to realize as soon as possible that you have chosen your career for the wrong reasons, before your confidence takes a hit. And second, to actively rebel against those forces that have pushed you away from your true path.”

I think this is the key to why many investors or traders burn out so quickly. For every Warren Buffett, there are a few million former investors who dropped out of the field early, or slugged their way toward retirement.

Read more…

Business Strategy, Great Books, Investing, Money, Online Investing AI, Success mastery, traders, trading, Warren Buffett

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The notion that robots are sweeping in and stealing jobs is become an increasingly more virulent meme.

You can check out some of the angst at the Boston Globe and here, at Boing Boing.

It follows a long list of such occupational fears. The Irish, Italians, Japanese, Mexicans, and, more recently, Chinese were all identified as job thieves at one time or another. Robots are just the latest immigrant class who are threatening upheaval in the workplace, although they’re not arriving in boats or on planes, but in labs and in factories.

These robots aren’t quite yet the Jetson type or Lost in Space models. It’s mainly automation that people are worried about. But the anthropomorphic types of robots are right around the temporal corner, as well.

Factory robots are being used to perform precise tasks that humans used to do. This is even a threat to cheap factory labor in places like China.

But the extent of the robots reach doesn’t just stop at the edges of the factory floor. Desk jobs and professional occupations — once thought immune to automation — are drifting into the cross hairs.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning make jobs like writing — Yikes! — and security susceptible to automation.

So what can we carbon-based lifeforms do, but prepare to welcome our new robotic overlords?

Read more…

Accelerating Technology, Automated Trading, Business Strategy, Internet, Investing, Money, Online Investing AI, Success AI, machine learning, robotics, robots

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Resolutions are the worst way to start off the New Year, especially in personal finance.

Although there are exceptions, most people don’t work on the “one-and-done” plan. We don’t wake up one day — whether it’s Jan. 1, or any other day — and simply and easily change a habit we’ve cultivated for years. In fact, those habits have not appeared overnight.

The difficulty in establishing New Year’s resolution is coupled with a tendency to become depressed when we don’t achieve a goal immediately.

Here’s the scenario: you make a resolution to change something — let’s say you want to start saving money by not eating out — a few weeks later, you realize you’ve gone out to a restaurant a few days in a row. Instead of laughing off the behavior and righting yourself, you become depressed. Then apathetic. Then, you figure, what the hell, you haven’t achieved your goals, so you might as well quit trying.

That’s why you might want to consider automatic. An automatic resolution is something that you can set up to help you achieve your personal financial goals. Here are a few examples:

Financial eNewsletters

Setting up the automatic delivery of personal financial email newsletters is an easy way to make sure you are continually learning about managing your money and these are awesome ways to remind you to pay attention to your financial decisions. Here are a few I like:

Personal Dividends

Money Crashers

Nerd Wallet

You can also use RSS feeds to automate your lessons in personal finance.

Read more…

Internet, Investing, Money, Online Investing AI, Success

Well, we dodged another apocalypse. That’s, like, the third in two years.

The 2012 Mayan prophecy turned out to be a non-prophecy at all. Probably because it was never meant to be one in the first place, but that didn’t stop dozens of people from making lots of money off of well-meaning, but naive folks who are always looking for the end-of-the-world, perhaps because they’re not crazy with how the world is currently.

And that’s what I want to talk about.

It’s easy to be drawn into media-saturated visions of a world going to hell in a handbasket.

Children being massacred. Rampant gun violence. An economy perpetually on the skids — and forever teetering over a fiscal cliff.

But, if you strip away the graphic scenes of carnage, reports of a gun-nutty populace running wild, and the bickering of political party ideologues, the true picture of a peaceful, prosperous — but flawed — world begins to statistically emerge.

Violence and crime are down.

Gun violence is down.

The truth is the world is more peaceful and less violent now than ever. You can read The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker if you don’t believe me.

“As technology accumulates and people in more parts of the planet become interdependent, the hatred between them tends to decrease, for the simple reason that you can’t kill someone and trade with him too.”

– Steven Pinker

While this truth can not bring back the 20 innocent lives shed in Newtown, Connecticut, it can perhaps reframe our perspective away from the one deeply damaged soul who took those lives and focus them on the wonderful human beings whose lives we shared for a brief time, the hundreds who were spared and the thousands who are among us and next to us today.

While it’s true the economy is struggling and partisan politics is playing pass-the-buck with the budget, we should still think how our economy survived a historic downturn in a relatively bloodless way. Downturns like this before have led to bloody revolutions, wars, and the establishment of autocratic governments.

And while pessimists want you to mire in the mud of past, I want you to think about some facts about the future.

Technology has united us and freed us from a lot of the restraints of previous economic shackles. You are viewing this on a device that probably has more computational potential than most corporations had 50 years ago and each year or so, that power increases exponentially.

On the horizon: medical breakthroughs and cures, longevity technology, quantum computers, 3-D printing, crowdsourcing, crowdventure capital, cheaper and faster electronics, virtual reality, augmented reality, new energy sources, and who knows what else is percolating in some lab somewhere.

All of these have the potential to revolutionize our economy.

Do we face obstacles and hurdles to create a better world? Yes.

But facing these challenges with hope is far more effective than being overwhelmed by doubt and hopelessness.

I wish you the best of holidays!

Accelerating Technology, Money, Success apocalypse, future

It’s that time of year again.

Well, actually, it’s not that time of year again. It’s the month before that time of year again.

Each January, usually around the time that the first credit card statements arrive in the mail or in your email inbox, you promise that next Christmas shopping season will be different. You’ll shop wisely. You’ll spot sales. You’ll avoid needless purchases and focus in on things people need. You won’t over-drink, over-eat, and over-spend.

In sum, you will beat the whole holly-jolly-fa-la-la-la-la-la-ho-ho-ho system.

And then you over-drink, over-eat, and over-spend.

Well, this year IS going to be different. We’re starting early and getting ahead of the curve — or, maybe, the wreath.

Here are plenty of tips to help you out.

Now, this year, I recommend you read through the articles and adopt the low-handing fruitcake first. Adopt the principles that are realistic for your lifestyle — and then revisit the harder ones next year. For most of us, incremental change is the easiest to adopt and the easiest to turn into positive habits.

7 Money Saving, Stress-Less Holiday Shopping Tips — Real Simple

Holiday Shopping Tips from Behavioral Economists – Bloomberg

Holiday Shopping Secrets: 3 Money-Saving Tablet Tips Retailers Won’t Tell You — Huffington Post 

10 Shopping Tips to Minimize Holiday Debt – LowCards.com

How You Can Now When Top Holiday Deals Are Coming — Market Watch

5 Tips for Safe Holiday Shopping from LifeLock! — Not Quite Suzie

Top 10 Savings Tips for Holiday Shopping — The Bookshelf

Four Money Savings Tips For Holiday Shopping — Purex 

Five Tips to Help You Survive Holiday Shopping – 92. 9 NIN

5 Ways to Steer Clear of Debt in Holiday Shopping — Seattle Times 

Money Gizmo’s 12 Tips of Christmas — Money Gizmo

Internet, Investing, Money, Online Investing AI, Success buying, christmas, gifts, holiday, holidays, shopping

When Hurricane Sandy slammed into the mid-Atlantic states last week, the typical voices of concern began to arise about this strange weather phenomena.

Indeed, no storm of this size has hit New Jersey this late in the season since 1903. The path of the storm was equally bizarre. It looked like it was heading out to sea and then, suddenly, did a right hook into the seaboard. Changes in the jetstream may have caused this wiggle.

I am old enough to remember when the voices of concern would call the hurricane a judgment of God. But we don’t believe in that anymore.

The hurricane is an act of manmade climate change. That’s the new angle.

Years of belching carbon into the atmosphere is catching up with us, these people say.

I’m not going to argue either way.

But I am going to suggest that if humans are causing climate change, then that might be a good thing.

Humans have become so successful, so powerful, and so productive that their very actions are changing the weather patterns of an entire planet. Obviously, not in necessarily beneficial ways. But, we typically discover new powers and abilities accidentally, or in unconventional ways.

Read more…

Accelerating Technology, Success, US Economy climate, climate change, geoengineering, terraforming