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Synergy Traders #283rd Annual Women Teach Trading

and Investing: Opportunities forEveryone in Today’s Markets

Join us March 1st-5th:timingresearch.com/ STPDF

(the full schedule is available here at as well)

Hosted by TradeOutLoud and TimingResearch

2021 will likely be another wild year for the markets.

Each seminar presents the latest cutting-edgetrading tactics, as some of the sharpest mindsin the industry reveal their secrets. These arereal, usable, and proven trading tactics that

you can put right to work; improving yourtrading to boost your bottom line.

Table of Contents

About Mercedes Oestermann van Essen

Introduction

A new paradigm for trading success

Let there be light

My early trading years: An initiation into a new reality

Enlightenment as a means to trading success

Your trading environment and mastery

Your mind’s operating system explained

How your conditioning creates your beliefs

How your conditioning causes trading mistakes

How your internal representation system creates your

(trading) world

How to access sensory modalities

What your internal filters reveal about your risk profile

Invisible profit thieves: EMF & geopathic stress

Is 5G the biggest threat to your wellbeing today?

What the cognitive development stages reveal about your trading

style

How to develop genuine trading confidence

The alpha male and the ego self

What your stop loss strategy reveals about you

Embrace uncertainty, it transmutes fear

Witness yourself, it’s the ultimate trading success

manifestation tool

Three essential success manifestation primers

Meditation

Non-invasive neuro stimulation

Aka cord cutting

From trading fears and limitations to the heart energy

Part Two

Four practical exercises to train your mind for trading success

Retraining the mind with the power of the question

Find your core values

Micro EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique)

Shadow clearing with EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique)

10 EFT session templates

Three Quick energizing techniques

Conclusion - Pulling it all together

Important Links

About Mercedes Oestermann van Essen Mercedes Oestermann van Essen is a performance coach and thought leader in the field of trading psychology and transformation. She trained at Commerzbank. A deep interest in how realty works lead her to study the wisdom traditions and learn different healing energy modalities. The study of the UFO phenomenon, cosmic history and the science of epigenetics and quantum reality promoted a deeper appreciation and understanding of the cosmic centric nature of life. From this understanding a new way of looking at the cycles inherent in evolution emerged. Mercedes has traded stocks and futures for over two decades. Today her main focus is on teaching, coaching and public speaking. Trading as an independent trader for many years produced deep insights into the financial system which still elude most traders, brokers and investors. During that time a new awareness started to bud: The realization that we all have the power to heal our wounds become more of a feature: She began exploring her own healing abilities. Years of experimenting with different meditation practices followed. In that period, she began coaching traders. It wasn’t long until traders began to experience profound shifts in consciousness with the intended healing occurring in most unexpected ways. In the early days of coaching she was unsure of her path, pulled between trading full time, which she loved and following the inner calling to coach traders. The calling to work as a coach and healer would become stronger and stronger over the years. Now coaching and trading co-exist happily together. It took her quite a few years to make the transition and focus predominantly on shining light on the dense financial world that is steeped in old, outdated paradigms. Today Mercedes helps traders to approach trading from enlightened states of consciousness rather than trading from greed, fear and competition. She has facilitated challenging transition periods for many professional and independent trades assisting them to find inner harmony and peace resulting in healthier (trading) lives. Thirty years of research into environmental energies and their impact on the brain gave birth to a unique coaching and mentoring style that moves beyond performance coaching. It encompasses space healing and transformational healing of the mind/body matrix. Mercedes combines spiritual healing with neuro-science. Over the years a powerful formula evolved that pulls her clients out of the dualistic world view of separation and hardship into a profound understanding of being one with everything in the world and learning to live from this place in their (trading) lives. Her innovative techniques take her clients beyond the illusions of reality into a profound understanding of the infinite wisdom of the creative forces that permeate the entire cosmos.

Her unique and innovative meditation techniques and coaching style elicit profound perceptual shifts. Mercedes studied NLP, HUNA and Zen Buddhism and is a Reiki master, an advanced EFT practitioner and Theta healer. Many traders and investors regard Mercedes Oestermann van Essen’s work life transformational.

Traders are human beings first and foremost

Allow your inner light to shine,

it brings out the master trader and the master of live

Let’s together embark on a journey which,

provided you follow through with the techniques,

will bring you lasting trading and investment success

Introduction

The new paradigm for trading success: A modern Buddhist perspective The Buddha reached enlightenment at the age of 35 on a night of the full moon, so the story goes. Upon gazing at Venus in his meditation he suddenly realised that Venus, the moon and he were one. This little story may sound somewhat trivial to you, however when you truly grasp the concept of the story you will appreciate the immense wisdom contained herein. Your life will change… Now, you may well wonder how a book entitled “The Buddhist Trader” is going to help you get to grips with the psychology of becoming a persistently profitable trader and investor. Let’s be clear about the term “Buddhist”, since the term is often misunderstood. Buddhism in its purest form is not a religion, it is a vision of self-mastery. The Buddhist Trader does not teach religious concepts, it teaches you how the universe works and how you, the human being works. When you know how the universe works you hold the key to self-fulfilment in all areas of your life. Your level of trading success is directly related to your depth of self-knowledge and knowledge of universal laws. One of the biggest hurdles we must come to terms with is the apparent duality of existence. Your world is basically a world of opposites, it is polarised and dualistic in nature. We are deeply immersed in the dualistic worldview. We are either healthy or unhealthy. We are rich or poor, there is day and night, happiness or sadness, our likes and dislikes. Duality provides road signs pointing us in the direction where we need to go next on the path to fulfilment, joy and happiness. We have learnt to observe our world by comparison. We notice differences, similarities and we observe patterns or the absence of them. The markets are dualistic from our point of observation; for every buyer there is a seller. Every inflection point can potentially go in either direction. The dualistic nature of the markets is also one of the major problems, particularly challenging new traders

when they start out on their trading journey. They need to come to terms with their dualistic nature which expresses itself through the lens of market action. When the start out trading at some point many traders come face to face with their own dualistic nature for the first time in their lives. Their own duality is reflected and the duality of trading and in our world view. Duality appears to be an integral part of our existence wherever we look.

The appearance of omni present duality presents a huge cognitive shift most traders are unprepared for Traders don’t know how to deal with this aspect of their trading reality. Oftentimes this is the beginning of many challenges which need to be faced and integrated. When traders see their own dualistic nature reflected in their trading for the first time the rude wakeup call is met with dismay, fear and disbelief. It prompts a rapid shift away from the initial confidence and enthusiasm for trading that made them believe the easy money is around the corner. The enthusiasm gives way to self-doubt and deep rooted existential fears that must be acknowledged and overcome. When first faced with the new dualistic reality the shock to the belief system can be huge. Traders and investors do not know where to turn for the answers to their challenges. The sudden appearance of self-doubt and insecurity which mingles with greed and impatience to prove how good they can be at making money sets up traps even experienced traders fall into. The big brokers know about this weakness. The system is designed to exploit your weaknesses, it is not set up to support or enable you to excel at trading and strengthen your inner master. You will have to do that yourself. The few trading psychology courses out there only scrape the surface of the challenges many traders face during their trading career. Built on now outdated psychological principles they focus on developing the discipline to obey the rules. Nobody ever pointed out to traders that there is a deeper reality which is much more important to the attainment of their desires than the three-dimensional world of hard work. Traders and investors live in the illusion that trading mastery equals the time spent learning to trade. The idea that once you have to spend 10 000 hours on trading and you will be a master trader is still peddled as an absolute success rule. Therefore, the majority of traders focus on improving the performance of their trading system and ignore the psychological side of trading. I have worked with many experienced traders with 30 years trading experience. If one would add up the hours they have spent trading, it would be well over 10 000 hours. Even after 30 tears of trading one can hit roadblocks. Traders often spent many years overcoming challenges. The roadblock is still there because their mindset is still rooted in past memories. Recent events have highlighted the importance of the principles explained in “The Buddhist Trader”, namely that we must increase the INNER LIGHT. Darkness cannot exist in the light. Your inner game, your psychology reflects the amount of light you hold within your body and mind. The principles taught by the wisdom traditions are deceptively simple, yet traders and investors have a hard time to put them into practice because they are too focused on the negativity of “dangerous market environment”.

Your trading and your investing reflect your inner game. They are the mirror of your beliefs. In this book I will show you how you can increase your inner light and thus improve your trading and investment in ways no trading system can. When you learn how to hold the light inside, fear anxiety, and the many other dysfunctional emotions so many traders feel cannot exist. Many of my clients come to me because they read “The Buddhist Trader” and realized that an important element in their trading education is missing. Emotional maturity and self-regulation occur in the realm of subtle energy, they are spiritual in nature and manifestation is created in that subtle energy field. The lacking element is usually a total absence of the understanding universal laws and how they apply to life and to trading. People believe that hard work is the corner stone that creates change and increases the balance in their trading accounts. This erroneous belief has decimated many trading accounts. When one “works hard” one changes matter with matter. The process is slow and wastes a lot of energy. The science of quantum physics has shown us that this way of looking at our manifestation ability is deeply flawed. Newtonian physics have been shown to be largely irrelevant when it comes to achieving peak performance and creating changes that last a lifetime. Newtonian physics ignores the unseen reality. It assumes if something cannot be measured it either doesn’t exist or is irrelevant to the manifestation process. It also ignores the fact that there is an element of uncertainty in the creative process that cannot be accounted for. We will talk about this in more depth later. The uncertainty of creation is a vital piece of the puzzle of trading that must be understood if you want to become the proficient master of your (trading) universe. What I am saying is this:

The parts of reality you cannot readily see are the parts that create your three-dimensional reality We now know there are easier, less stressful and more pleasant ways to elicit the progress and positive changes we desire. It takes time for new ideas to hit the mainstream. Usually new ideas are rejected for decades, even when the scientific evidence supporting a new idea cannot be denied. We can sum it up like this; we look at reality back to front and work at the end of the creative cycle, hoping to make changes, instead of focusing on the beginning of the creative cycle which is the realm of the non-physical. Traders have big challenges understanding this concept. They are immersed in the belief that the three-dimensional world is REALITY. Most of us have not been taught to work from the inside out. We work from the outside in, believing that it is the fastest way to get what we want. Accepting that we are looking at our reality back to front is a major challenge to the linear mind. It is hugely unpalatable to think that something invisible can be more important than the material world. We have the scientific proof that the esoteric side of life is more dominant than our three-dimensional world of the senses. The idea that creation starts BEFORE you see it in your material world is frowned upon because it requires an element of trust. Trust has disappeared over the last few centuries. It has given way to a worldview where instant gratification is the norm.

The mere suggestion that you have to practice for many years to become a master at anything is met with disbelief and resistance. The attention span of the untrained mind is getting shorter and shorter. The energetic shift of our galaxy is causing an illusion that energy is speeding up. What is changing is the harmonic relationship between our own energy, the energy in our immediate surroundings and the energy in the galaxy. There is temporarily a widening gap as humans and their immediate environment must catch up energetically to come back into alignment with the new energy frequency around us. Whenever frequency levels are changing, our brains have a hard time to keep up with this epochal shift that is ushering in new paradigms rendering our old ways of operating obsolete. The present shift is the effect of many super cycle convergences. It will be felt for many years to come with varying degrees of intensity. To most of you this fact, if you are aware of it, doesn’t appear to be directly connected to trading. Esoteric wisdom is not relevant to the harsh world of trading. This erroneous belief is a big mistake. It is as far removed from the truth as can be. The misperception causes much pain and delays trading success in more ways than one. We have to face up to it.

The illusions upon which we have built our world view for centuries cannot be held up much longer The time is over when we could stick our heads in the sand and pretend that all is well. Amnesia as a coping mechanism has ceased to work. Usually, when traders undergo a confidence crisis they begin to look deeper into the inherent dualistic nature of the markets which when all said and done, only reflect the dualistic nature of our consciousness. In its essence duality is a stage in our development not a fact.

What I am saying is this: The appearance of duality is an illusion If you want to be a successful trader, you must overcome the tendency to be suckered into your dualistic worldview and develop steadfast singular vision in the face of dualistic appearances playing out in every moment of your trading life. As you know only too well, for every position you take, someone is taking the other side. If this were not so there would be no markets. Alas, whose market call is right and whose market call is wrong? There is no answer to this question since it depends on your time frame, your trading style or investment style. If your trading system was focused on solid self-knowledge many losses would be avoided. On the face of it, duality fuels market action. It is the heart of market dynamics and keeps us as traders interested and excited.

Looking at (trading) life from the dualistic perspective has built into it an invisible block and promotes massive unconscious value

conflicts that stop most traders and investors from making money in the long run We cannot view duality in isolation from other universal forces that interact with the ever changing ebb and flow of market action. Duality creates separation while a holistic view which knows that everything is interconnected and moves together as one promotes inner peace and harmony. Trading from this premise is the way forward. It is the only way to trade. At this point things usually get very interesting and also rather challenging for many traders. They simply cannot accept that there is a technique which will get them to the Holy trading Grail if only they followed it steadfastly. The technique is a departure from how the mind habitually operates. The mind is firmly rooted in the past. It wants to find solutions by scanning past experiences. The trouble with this operation model is that it has ceased to work. It is outdated. The world of traders is divided; there is you and then there is the, hmm, let’s call that elusive force “The creator”. Humans call creation God, The Buddha, Allah, the field or other names that are used in their culture. They have learnt that this force has created them somehow and that the practice of “worship” might improve their (trading) lives. They are completely missing the point that creation is all pervasive and above all permanent. Creative force is non-local, non-religious, impersonal and permanent. You are not connected to source one minute and the next minute you are not because the connection is eternal. To be, or not to be, is still the big question… Many traders become different people when they trade. They unwittingly yield to their lower instincts of competition, greed and fear. Competition, greed and fear are character traits from the lower survival instincts that are rooted in old beliefs that you have to fight or flee for your survival. Let’s be perfectly clear about this. Source, creator, God, whichever name you prefer to give the phenomenon of creation has not created the idea of separation. We have created the idea at some point in our long history. Consciousness has brought the idea of negative force into existence and over time the idea has manifested in our lives as a “solid” reality. Negative force is still taught in the history books as the only truth of existence. Life is “dangerous”; therefore you must prepare for the next bad event. If the history books are to be believed, humans are an evil bunch. Ultimately all duality is an illusion which hides a much bigger underlying truth that duality is our mental construct. It has no solid foundation other than the belief in its existence. From a quantum perspective at the pivot point of creation, the zero point field, everything is one. From this place there is no evil, there are no mistakes and there is no decay. In contrast to common lore which has you believe that life is a one way street, we have the ability to re-set ourselves at any time. We can revisit the zero point field with our consciousness and create something new from this set point. Cosmic creation is a place of expansion and eternal recreation of infinite possibilities. The process is nonlinear, it does not follow Newtonian physics.

I am well aware I am hitting you with many insights right at the beginning. Don’t let this disturb you. All will make sense as you continue reading. The essence of what we are saying is this; if you can arrive at that place where you experience your mind and the markets as one, you will have a head start and a major edge as a trader. You will have a head start in your (trading) life because the differentiations, self-doubts and self-sabotaging habits you may have will fall away once you access the state of oneness. I am going to share with you the deeper understanding of the principle of oneness and show you strategies how to apply this understanding in your trading life to improve your trading. The singular belief in duality as a foundational law of existence has a value conflict built in, You believe that there is ONE law. The law is DUALITY. How can that be possible? Where there is light there is shadow…really? There is wealth, there is poverty and there is money both on the long and the short side… To the superficial observer trained in seeing what “is” only, it seems that both opposites are always in existence. Evil seems more powerful than good in a world that seems to be dominated by war, strive and aggression. This awareness, which has the illusion of rock solid realness to it has completely distorted the truth of existence. The illusion is the reason why we fear for our survival and believe that ill health and entropy are a part of our existence that cannot be changed. Nothing could be more incorrect. Underneath the concepts of entropy and friction is another reality where conflict and friction do not exist. Everyone wishing to have a richer, more enlightened life has to walk across the bridge from present reality of lack and strive to living in alignment with universal force. The new paradigm must be embraced without looking back. When you walk across that bridge, it leads away from external focus to internal focus and the realization that the only point of control resides inside. In other words, the secret to accessing your deepest powers of creation is within you. Therefore, there is nowhere to go and there is nothing to find elsewhere. I know, that is a tough pill to swallow. Many of my students try their utmost to convince me that their problem is outside of them and not inside. When they eventually acknowledge it and embody the truth about themselves a powerful force is ignited.

Let There Be Light… Behind the veil universal creation is not dualistic, it is whole and all encompassing. We will go deeper into this later. For now let’s just say;

It is possible for you to be in oneness with everything you are doing while simultaneously noticing the dualistic aspects of market action on which you base your trading decisions. The state of oneness allows you to focus with more clarity. You see more of the big picture. Now you can process larger amounts of information. When you buy into the duality of the collective consciousness you see life through blinkers. There are obstacles because the path is not straight in your dualistic mind, it is littered with “roadblocks”.

A straight path? Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? We learn in stages. The stages of learning and evolving are always the same. It is just the speed at which we move through the stages that varies from individual to individual. To many of you the idea of oneness sounds appealing and elusive at the same time. I invite you to keep an open mind, even though the world seems to offer a very different perspective. If you are open minded the concept of living in oneness is first understood at an intellectual level. Over time it will be gradually integrated at an emotional level, a step at a time. The integration will occur faster if you continue to learn about the reality behind your perceived “reality”. Gradually the mind expands into accepting new possibilities. We will go deeper into this a bit later. Once started the process of expansion never stops. Now you will have awoken your mind’s natural curiosity and innate drive for expansion. It can take a long time to move from mere intellectual understanding to living in the new awareness permanently and applying it effortlessly in your daily life. The expansion will lead you to a new, greater sense of self-actualization and increased wellbeing. It cannot be any other way because we are dealing with the basic universal law of evolution. You have free will over your evolution. You can stop the process by taking your attention away and choosing to remain as you are. That is the free will we all have. In doing so, you may go against the deeper wisdom inside you that is ready to grow and give into the conditioned side of you that knows of fear, lack, difficulty and limitation. If your focus remains on attaining so called enlightenment, (which basically means knowledge), at some point success in all areas of life ensues as a natural by-product once you transform this knowledge into practical application. This transformation does not unfold as if by magic overnight. It requires patience and the ability to trust in an unknown outcome without seeing the finished product. Our challenge is to allow this process to unfold and walk along the path with natural curiosity and no resistance.... When there is no resistance there is room for surrender. Surrender does not come naturally to the conditioned mind that has been programmed to operate predominantly to survive in an uncertain world.

I hope to show you that creator’s innate nature is not dangerous, rather it is benign. Only the disconnect from grace has enabled dark forces to pollute our minds and control our evolution. Light is knowledge. In the face of light, darkness cannot exist. The principle is simple because it applies to everything in the cosmos. It is all pervasive, yet humans have become prisoners of the fake propaganda machine that constantly dangles in front of us the dangers of a hostile environment. The propaganda is a big con, the biggest con of the past thousands of years. Maybe you find this statement hard to accept. I am with you. I too was a bit shocked when I first woke up to the reality of what is playing out here on earth. What we experience on earth does not reflect the innate nature of source. It reflects a disconnect from source. Many of us have lost the connection to source. Acceptance begins when you grasp the concept of this philosophy intellectually and intend to focus on the truth behind the facade. The truth will eventually reveal itself to you. When you place your dominant focus inside at some point you will realize that creation is benign, it has your back. This insight is so profound, it is a game changer for everything. Your relationship with yourself, your relationship with others, your relationship with the world and your relationship with the markets.

We can also call this awareness the first stage of learning about enlightened states... Since evolution unfolds in the same way for everyone and everything in the universe, there are no shortcuts to mastery, including trading mastery. If you choose real mastery over your trading, you must develop an understanding of the invisible forces that drive everything in existence and become adept at accurately reading those invisible forces. It is a vital part of your trading strategy. Either you want to attain mastery or not. If you do seek mastery and want to lead a life of excellence and grace you have to follow the book of universal rules. You will have to familiarize yourself with a new language. Accepting this is very hard for most traders, yet without it you will not attain the (trading) mastery. Integrating a new teaching requires much more than reading a book or two. That is just the beginning. For a new concept to become life changing it must be felt inside. You must own it and make it a part of your entire being. Whenever you experience a new concept from deep within yourself, you awaken its power within you. From then on you can begin to apply it in your life. Experiencing the sense of oneness in a dualistic world and living in oneness in your daily life brings immense peace. If you want to become better at trading and at life, you must embody the truth that duality is just a concept. Embodiment means that the understanding has moved beyond the mere intellectual comprehension of an idea. Change happens only when you are immersed in a new paradigm and embody it. Once you embody a paradigm you stop questioning its truth and stop being conscious of it. An inner knowing replaces mere conscious awareness, awe and focus. Getting to that level of acceptance and integration is your

challenge. It is the biggest challenge you have in life every time you intend to embody a new practice, a new paradigm, or idea. It is also one of the only two real challenges you have in life once you cut out all the smoke and mirrors of illusions from which you have led your life. You will learn what it means to go beyond the fluff. I am not saying that it is easy when you first start unravelling the layers of misperception; however it can be done. Everyone can do it. I have done it; the path was traumatic at times and full of unexpected surprises and insights. If I can do it, so can you and hopefully much faster with fewer roadblocks. Shortly I will share with you a little more about my journey simply to show you that your situation isn’t special. You and I are the same. The only difference is our individual conditioning from which we have created our world views, mostly unconsciously.

Beyond the “zone” I will guide you through different techniques to experience the theory of stepping into oneness and living it. Don’t worry, it is not nearly as complicated or out of reach as it may appear to you at this moment. Living in oneness is deceptively simple, yet most people and most traders don’t get it because they have never experienced the theory in practice. You will discover many new ideas and powerful techniques to experience the new ideas. If you read the following chapters with awareness, the way you view yourself, market machinations and ultimately how you trade or invest will change profoundly. Many books talk about “trading in the zone” which is ultimately what we are after but few tell you how to get there and none tell you what it feels like to be in this state. None tell you about the emotional and psychological foundations that need to be in place and must be practiced so that you can get into this state easily at will. “Being in the zone” is a fully integral process. It is about much more than just working on your mental state. It is a body/mind feeling that immerses every part of you fully in the experience. The state goes beyond your body feeling. When you are fully in the zone, which means being one with the universe, your immediate environment responds to the powerful energy emanating through you. The boundaries between you and your environment merge. Studies show that our energetic vibration, which is the essence of our being, has an influence of around 1000 feet beyond our body and ultimately much beyond that. You can increase this field significantly with the right mind/body practices. Alas, this is the subject for another discussion. For now, remember that everything you do has much greater impact on your world and beyond than you may realise. The spirit from which you do anything in life deepens the impact.

In order to deepen the impact of your thinking and acting, you must first let go of all those false assumptions you have acquired along the way about how life works. There is no other way. I have tried many different approaches. Yet in the end all paths lead to the same insight. There is a law that is bigger than our three-dimensional reality. There is an intelligent cosmic energy which is benign. Call it Buddha, call it Christianity, call it simply creator energy. Everyone can access this energy, if they choose to. It is nonlocal, non-personal and all encompassing. You must be willing to be guided by it in order to receive it. I believe that I can show you the quickest way, although I cannot make you follow the path. The path starts with accepting that there is a reality beyond the three- dimensional world you are wedded to. Your reality is an illusion that has been presented to you and created for you by forces beyond the original core of creation. You need to know about it so that you realize why you should make the effort to change beliefs and habits, if you desire to have a fuller life. In the final analysis, your trading is not your life. Your trading is a mirror of what you believe about life. It is one of many mirrors… Dare you look in the mirror and see beyond the reflection? After all said and done, the mirror does not accurately reflect you: The mirror is always distorted. It is not a true reflection of the real you.

Mastery, the straight path… We are not going to go into trading styles and systems. You will not find detailed strategies about how to manage your risk and how to set up a trading plan. There are plenty of books out there on these basics already. You will, however, gain clarity about your trading and investment style simply by getting to know yourself better. I am going to show you the straight path. Focusing on improving your trading system is a bit like putting the cart in front of the horse. Your trading system is the result of self-knowledge. It is the final step in creating the master trader and comes after the inner work has been your focus for a while. There are a few hedge funds that realize this truism; Ray Dalio makes all his traders meditate daily. No meditation practice, no job at his hedge fund.

Trading is just a channel: One of many channels the universe has for your unique personality Trading is not the only channel As you grow and expand your conscious you will become aware that you can easily channel many forms of abundance at the same time. If your vibrational energy is in alignment, things begin to flow to you free from obstruction. Your job is to tune into the frequency of alignment. That means going with the flow and never going against it.

Self-knowledge is the key to all mastery. Trading and investing are no exceptions. Developing trading mastery is not about addressing your trading performance, rather it is about discovering the real you underneath all the conditioning. There are three components of mastery, I call them “The Happy Venn Diagram of environment, body and mind”. The three components need to be in harmony. If one aspect of “The Happy Venn Diagram” is out of balance you will find it much harder to perform at your best. You will waste too much energy maintaining the status quo, instead of flowing with the evolution of life. Connecting seamlessly to oneness means looking at the entire canvas, not just an aspect of it. Most of you are like tiny insects looking at the elephant. The insect only sees a minute part of the whole…Can you live like this? Yes, of course you can. However, you view of what is possible is very restricted. Your environment, your emotional health and your relationships are in harmony when you think and act in harmony with universal forces. Once you understand universal laws and free yourself from the external expectations of your conditioned self you open the door to your own inner powers of creation instead of just seeing limitation and lack.

This cognitive shift will take your trading to new levels of mastery Looking at the different aspects of the psychology of trading through the lens of the latest findings in the field of energy psychology, quantum physics and neuroscience it becomes obvious that there is so much more possible in our lives at large. It goes way beyond trading. Good trading performance is about so much more than just your P & L; It includes your personal life and your wellbeing since your trading life does not evolve in isolation from other areas of your life. As we will see, your trading life, your relationships and all the other aspects that make up your life are inextricably interwoven. You will notice that trading behaviour has patterns which repeat in other areas of your life. This may not yet be apparent to you; however, when you have read this book and have gone through the exercises you will start noticing how patterns repeat in different areas of your life.

The universe is a hologram Everything you do is a fractal of other aspects of your life because the nature of the entire universe is holographic. You are a fractal of the hologram. Every cell in your body contains the blueprint of the entire hologram and unfolds in a certain order. Just like the markets do not play out in chaotic or random fashion, rather they are a continuous replay of similar patterns and cycles playing out over different time cycles and different price levels. In order to give you a head start in achieving trading mastery you should strive to have as comprehensive a view of yourself and of the markets as possible. To the best of my knowledge this book will expand your awareness of yourself and the world like no other book on the psychology of trading.

The Buddhist Trader provides you with a template that can renew your life in ways you cannot as yet imagine. This is not hype but my own personal experience. I live the principles I am sharing with you in my work. We will look at how behaviour patterns arise and why it so often feels that we are stuck in an old pattern. You will learn about the importance of your personal level of development and how you can use this knowledge to make positive changes to un-resourceful trading behaviours. This knowledge can help you enormously with your trading because your individual level of development dictates how you see yourself, the markets and people around you.

Cognitive development is the mirror of your existence When I talk about development I am talking primarily about cognitive development. Cognitive development is the most important of all types of development because it has a huge impact on your trading. You will learn about the basic tenets of developmental theory. It provides you with useful inside information about your personal interpretation of market action. When you know at which development level you are operating, you have a valuable insight into how you process information. This knowledge can greatly assist you in reaching your trading goals. I am sure you can appreciate just how useful this knowledge will be for you. There is another reason why understanding a little about evolutionary theory is of immense benefit; this is because our developmental level changes and evolves, it isn’t static. The process is ongoing, even though you may not be aware of the change from one day to the next. Our personal evolution mirrors the evolution of the cosmos. Evolution is holographic in nature, as is consciousness. It plays out in smaller cycles and fractals throughout a person’s lifetime, just as it plays out in the universe. Naturally, as we go through developmental stages our cognitive awareness changes too. When all goes smoothly our awareness gradually expands, we integrate the new states easily and you will hardly notice the transitions from one level to the next. Alas, as we all know, life seldom moves in a straight line, just like the price of a stock or commodity seldom goes up or down in a straight line. Translated into your human nature, this means that you can get stuck in your developmental evolution. It is very common to remain in more than one evolutionary level at a time. When one is stuck in two or three evolutionary development levels it is hard to do anything consistently because each individual evolutionary level has its own unique way of dealing with reality. When an individual is stuck in two or more levels at the same time, different “realities” compete with each other. Understanding what is going on and knowing what developmental level or levels you are residing at will help you to break free from self imposed limitations.

Supressed trauma stops cognitive development Unresolved trauma in the early levels of development can lead to problems later in life. Cognitive dissonance resulting from unresolved early life trauma is an issue for many traders because the fast paced activity of intraday trading can trigger suppressed trauma. This needs to be resolved if you want to trade profitably with

consistency. We also call this type of work “shadow work”. I will share with you some techniques to resolve mental blocks arising from suppressed trauma. I have worked with people who love to trade and yet have no feel for the markets. They keep losing money and come up with reasons why they cannot follow a strategy or discipline. Unresolved shadows are often the problem. Once released, the problems will disappear. If you have unresolved shadows, and who hasn’t, you may not be in touch with your true self. You will feel ungrounded a lot of the time without being fully aware of the issue. Typical tell-tale signs are fear of change, judgement and anxiety. You are blaming market conditions, your trading system or poor fills from your broker to name but a few of the default reactions. The techniques you find here will help you to identify shadows and release them. Understanding the role of developmental stages plays an important part in identifying and releasing these shadows.

Trading is a journey of self-exploration When you start trading you probably think of one goal only. That goal is to find a good trading system that can make you money. Few beginning traders realize that trading is 90 % psychology. It is an inside job. The sooner you realize that trading is a journey of self-exploration first and foremost, the easier it will be for you to do what is necessary to bring out the inner master inside of you. This is how it felt to me fairly early in my trading journey. Once I over came the initial shock that my inner game was as far away from perfect as it could possibly be, I embraced the realization that the activity of trading allowed me to get me in touch with my deepest inner self. I realized quite early on in my trading journey that I needed to overcome my innermost fears of losing money. I knew that I needed to curb my impatience and stop the habit of overtrading if I ever wanted to become consistently profitable. It took a long time from the initial realization to the actualization of these insights. The reason? I was dealing with trauma issues which had been dormant all my life. I was lacking effective tools to deal with my emotions. I saw the challenge clearly, yet it took me quite a few years of trial and error until I got the formula right. During that time I was dealing with much emotional pain until I finally discovered a set of tools that worked for me.

My life before trading I was fascinated by the markets from a very young age. I remember reading the stock market section in the newspapers with great interest and excitement at the age of 12 years and trying hard to understand it all. Fortunately, my father was able to satisfy

my curiosity and explain the basic workings of the stock market. A few years later, working at Commerzbank, my greatest joy was the time spent at Dusseldorf stock exchange, which back then operated like the CME, (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) but in miniature. I always had a natural curiosity about life and the nature of our reality. My fascination with the mysteries of the unknown lead me down many unconventional paths. Something inside me knew that we have the answers even to those things which on the face of it seem inexplainable. I loved exploring spiritual matters from my early twenties onwards. I remember reading Steven Hawkins’s best selling book more than once. The book fascinated me, it stretched my mind beyond its limits. At this stage of learning I was still like many other so called “seekers”, I gathered information. My mind was both intensely curious, but also fearful. Fear often stopped me from moving beyond my comfort zones. I was stuck at the level of the intellectual information gatherer, believing that I was having an experience when actually I had stopped at the point of gathering information. Eventually that would change. I took the vital leap from information gatherer to experiencing the truths behind the wisdom teachings and absorbed scientific studies. The leap was profound. It eventually enabled me to teach my clients how to move into a new state of being and go beyond the intellectual understanding of the concepts to living them. My work has become increasingly transformational because I have realized that the work is ultimately about learning to heal the distorted lens through which we see life. Healing happens at the spiritual level. It is subtle energy. Subtle energy is the catapult for transformation. Focusing exclusively on the material world of matter is superficial and doesn’t produce lasting progress. This is why learning a trading system, no matter how well it performs for you, will not make you a master trader. It will make you good at mechanical execution. True mastery, by contrast, always involves using your own creative vision and intuition. This is the stuff of freedom, everything else is dependence on external forces.

If you desire transformation that lasts a lifetime and brings much more than trading success, you will have to walk the path of spiritual awakening Trading got me into studying Zen and other wisdom traditions. It was the start of a massive shift in perception and ultimately in consciousness for me. If you stick with it the path eventually reveals a hidden beauty that lies under the surface of life. Through trading I began to understand the deeper truths of universal law. Trading has taught me about life in a way no other practice has. Note, I said “practice”, not “job”. On my trading path I have been led to important insights into fundamental laws of our existence which are also present everywhere in our universe, including the world of trading. This knowledge did not come to me over night. And it was not an easy journey either, I can assure you.

It rather strikes me that awakening from the deep slumber of the collective unconsciousness is never easy, at least not in the early stages, when we lack the knowledge to use the tools revealed to us correctly.

My Early Trading Years, An Initiation into A Different World I always used to see myself as an optimistic person who loves trying new, exciting things. I love flying and have glided, flown in many interesting aeroplanes, including aerobatics. The latter was the raison d’etre of my life for many years. During those years I enjoyed many privileges, meeting interesting people, including the late Ray Hannah who was the leader of The Red Arrows, Tony Bianci and other legendary people in the flying world. And there were cars, I loved cars. Life was easy, often quite exciting and fun. A close friend, Geoff Richardson, many years my senior, who was the last formula one driver who financed his driving from his own family fortune, introduced me to aerobatics. From that first experience doing rolls and stall turns flying became an obsession for the next six years or so of my life. There was another side of me; that side was curious about the nature of our reality. I read many books on Buddhism and the mysteries of the world. Ufology was a very keen interest. It was also a field that got me to the edge of what I was willing to explore deeper in the early years of my life. Today, several decades later the missing pieces are coming together as my view has evolved more into a cosmic view, away from a more earth centred view. This was a natural progression and expansion of conscious evolving gradually over time. I was not seeking the knowledge, rather it opened up in a piece meal fashion over time. The mind is a wonderful tool once you know how to use it properly. You only consciously receive information your mind can process at any given moment. You have the choice to go deeper or to move away and revisit later. Amnesia is a protection mechanism that prevents you from seeing things you are emotionally and energetically unequipped for. Can you break through these barriers? Yes, you can. If you choose to do this while you are not sufficiently knowledgeable about the laws that govern our existence, you can run into trouble.

The system is ingenious, if we understand it and work with it correctly. Forcing universal intelligence to comply with our conditioned minds is not necessary. The ingenious system is testimony to an intelligence that wants to support you, not to destroy you. Force is always destructive. Making this insight my own and living it took me many years. Why am I telling you this? Simply, because I want to illustrate to you how these experiences shaped my life. Like many aspiring traders before me, I came to trading with the preconceived idea that I could use what I had learned in other areas of life and apply it to trading. When it finally began to dawn on me that this was not the case I went through a long period of self-doubt, frustration and resentment which took many years to dissolve. In the early days of my trading, I lacked the knowledge and the tools to resolve the internal conflicts arising from this unexpected challenge. Ultimately, this period in my life lead me much deeper into myself and made me face my deepest shadows in the process.

Many traders will do anything and everything to avoid looking at themselves with clarity of mind and neutrality It goes against everything we have been taught and implies weakness and vulnerability Being honest with yourself is one of the hardest things to do, yet it is necessary if you want to be a consistently good trader. For most of us the journey is not necessarily an easy one, nor is it pain free since it asks of us to transcend our known ego selves and enter into an entirely different reality. You become a different person. The mere idea of relinquishing the character that you got to recognize as “you” is deeply threatening to the ego mind. It turns the ego’s understanding of its role upside down causing cognitive dissonance. This cognitive dissonance often lasts for years and in most cases does not get resolved. Instead of resolving the conflict, traders give up. Don’t be one of them. I sincerely hope that in reading this book you get the insights most traders are lacking. When you understand why you act and react in ways that appear unreasonable, you open the door to a new way of thinking and acting. In the early years of trading I did not know where to turn for help. Like so many new traders, I followed different trading gurus and tried out many different trading systems. I worked on my system, rather than taking a good look at myself and asking myself who I needed to become in order to be a successful trader. None of the trading systems I tried, many of them from very successful and well known traders, worked for me. It was always the same; I would attend a course and the new strategy sounded so easy to begin with. I would come away from seminars feeling elated, believing that I had found the Holy Grail of trading at last. This time I would make money, for sure. I returned home from

many a seminar and began to apply what I had learnt in my trading account. The confidence and clarity I had experienced at the seminars vanished. Within a few days I would be lost and ready to abandon the new approach. I would go back to another system or merge different systems into a new one, but all to no avail. The losers were bigger than the winners and I would often post a few losers in a row. On many occasions I took “revenge trades” out of sheer bloody-mindedness. There was no plan or system, just the will to push somehow through the barriers. There was only one dominant thought; I had to win. Winning was the system. If I banged my head against the wall long enough success would surely follow. If only it were as simple as that. The missing piece that eluded me in the first two trading years or so was that I had no idea what style of trading suited my personal psychology. I did not know my own trading personality and tried to take on the trading style that worked for the gurus I was learning from. Most traders do this. Very few succeed with this approach because the discrepancy between their own personality and that of the guru is not in sync. Unless you are capable to completely give up your identity and assume the identity of the teacher, you will run into difficulty sooner or later.

The Buddha knew this. Jesus Christ knew this. The same goes for traders…Think about it… Hesitation as well as impulse trading were regular features of the early years of my trading. I had no understanding of cycles nor did I fully appreciate the value of reading market context correctly. What I had learnt about economics was of no use to intra-day trading. I had always felt that my trading knowledge was above average. I could blind people with the science of trading but I was still struggling to apply it. In the past I had held very successful seminars coaching military personnel in Germany and now I was getting into a state of meltdown whenever I lost 50 quid in my spread betting account! I had set up a spread betting account to allow me to “road test” new trading systems in smaller trading size before I would trade in larger size in my futures trading account. The challenges of my first two trading years affected my psychology way beyond what I could have ever imagined. As it turned out, the early trading experiences turned me into a very different person over a number of years. The person who emerged was much more resilient to the vagaries of life. I learnt steadfastness and above all I learnt to be comfortable with my inner demons seeing them for what they were; meaningless mental chatter that had no bearing on who I really am. We will talk about this subject in detail later. Gradually the constant internal noise subsided to occasionally make room for the nirvana of “emptiness”, the space of all possibility.

Today I can enter into this state pretty much at will. Yes, I still get triggered into anger and frustration occasionally. The anger does not last and I do not have to yield to the emotion. Today I am the passive observer of my life and of my thoughts. Whenever I get triggered these days, I am able to change my mental state very quickly within a few minutes most of the time. I am fully aware that anger, fear, happiness and forgiveness are choices we make. Very seldom do I hang on to anger, fear or other un-resourceful emotions for very long. This is the gift that awaits you when you work on expanding your cognitive awareness. It is also the place from which you can create the life you want. It is not an ego trip, rather it is done for you… In the early days of my conscious development I fought myself all along the way. Resistance was a word spelt with capital letters for me; I did not know that my programmed mind was “running resistance” all the time, let alone, how I was doing it. My ego’s survival need was bigger than my ability to move beyond myself into a different space of being. I had no idea what it meant to let go of old ideas. I had read many books about success principles and I had attended many personal development workshops, yet my ego was still running the show.

I needed to be right rather than doing the right thing I could not let go of my idea of how things should be and how they must evolve in order for me to feel sure that I was achieving my goals. Going with the flow was a just concept. I could not turn it into practice. My life thus far had been working in linear ways and whenever an unexpected event occurred, I had my father or some close friends to fall back on for guidance. Now that I was entering an entirely new stage in my life the old safety nets had disappeared seemingly overnight. My father had died and friends had disappeared as I had moved to another part of the country. All those issues were adding to my trading challenges, in fact, trading was the vehicle that brought those issues to the fore. It took me a while though to notice the co-relation.

9/11 - a wakeup call My life changed beyond belief shortly after the traumatic events of 9/11. The events around 9/11 proved to be an initiation into the realities behind the glossy trading facade. Little did I know then that a few years later I would meet my new life partner an institutional equities trader who worked at Cantor Fitzgerald’s London office when the attacks happened. I still recall the shock and horror of watching the towners collapse on TV. I was a keen student of technical analysis and had joined the ISTA (International society of technical analysts). Their annual conference took place a few months after the 9/11 in London. Yours truly eagerly attended.

The evening reception kicking off the event provided one of the biggest shocks of my life. I was talking to a group of analysts and traders from New York who told me that they had evidence that the 9/11 attack was a set up job. I was speechless. In my innocence, I believed that trading was one of the few occupations where manipulation was not possible. I believed that the trading world was an island of honesty where sovereignty and self-reliance were virtues that were honoured across the majority of professional traders. I believed natural market forces were the only thing driving the financial markets. I had no idea that there was another world behind the scenes which was the opposite of freedom and natural market dynamics. The analysts/traders, true to their word, sent me the document which they had put together. The document was a file containing well over 100 pages of evidence. My fear at the sight of this document was so profound that I chose to delete it in the hope that the matter would go away and I could remain in my bubble of erroneous beliefs of the reality of the trading world. A few years later, upon meeting my partner, I learnt things about the financial system which I would have never ever discovered by myself. My partner, who has worked for and met some of the top financial traders in his life, insisted on teaching me how the world of trading really works. Many a time I would reject his lectures. The illusions I had of the trading environment devoid of manipulation began to erode bit by bit. Deep existentialist fears made me reject much of what Felix said. My world was still fabricated from an idealist point of view which was superficial and blinkered, or was it? It took me quite some time to come to terms with the sinister side of the financial world and find a way to integrate it from a much deeper understanding of our creative source. The years that followed 9/11 forced me to take a deeper look into reality. I had to go deep if I was to ever become congruent and continue working in a world where greed and manipulation were common features and more sinister control games were played.

Eventually the rose-tinted glasses of superficial spirituality which couldn’t fully appreciate the deeper meaning of compassion and unconditional love, faded away. The journey into expanded awareness and self-appreciation began in earnest as I began to experience for myself the deeper meaning of the wisdom teachings and gnostic texts. My meditation practice was a huge help, it opened up my inner world and began to free me from the conditioned mind which yields to the senses as if they were the only real part of life. I am at point today where I can claim that I am living and experiencing the principles I teach. I realized at a very profound level that trading is just one of many channels in which we can experience abundance. Today I feel that my job is to help traders awaken to the deeper reality of their own powers of creation.

Your trading will improve when you embody a new image of yourself You are source. You are the Buddha, the Creator, the power that can transform anything, if you choose to embody this power.

With every trader who is willing to embody this awareness we are healing ourselves and our planet. How beautiful is that, my friends? Teaching universal law as the foundation for good trading is my passion. It enables me to work with my clients at a very deep level where we can go into the depth of the human psyche and do transformational healing work at the DNA level. Maybe, in reading this material you recognise your own challenges? We are at a place in our history where more people realize that there is more to life than just following a few rules, make a living or paying the bills. Trading, like few other careers has the power to bring the best and the worst out in you.

If you choose this path, trading is one of the most transformational tools around. It has the power to take you to new heights of understanding life and living it in divine bliss. I am sharing the early days of my trading life with you, as it may give you something to relate to and help you to know that you are not alone when you experience transitional challenges. I also want to give you a sense of the person behind the writing. This is important to me in a world that is overrun by superficial teachers and trainers who never experienced the fullness of life’s rich tapestry as traders or in any other profession they identify with. Life presents us with crossroads every once in a while:. We have to make a choice; do we turn left or right, do we go backwards or forwards? Transitional challenges are normal. They have the power to propel you to the next level if you allow it. The frustration, anger and fear of my first years of trading are hard to describe. My capital was disappearing in front of my very eyes and yet, somewhere underneath all the pain I knew I had it in me to be a successful trader. Yet, no matter how hard I tried, I just could not access the knowledge. I did not know how to fill the voids in front of me with meaningful content that would move me forward and enrich my personal life and my trading life. It seemed that I was being sucked into a succession of black holes. The void of emptiness became my daily experience. For years I was obsessed with the idea of becoming a successful trader. The harder I worked at it, the harder trading seemed to become. I identified with being a trader. I was the trader. Not being a trader rendered my life worthless. Oh, the curse of old karma… I tried different styles of trading. I tried intraday trading, swing trading, trading stocks, trading futures. None consistently worked for me. I would make some money and then give it all back. Trading destroyed me before it rebuilt me and moved me onto a very different plateau of reality. I can well and truly say that the need to fulfil my dream of becoming a successful trader has been the most profound and prolonged challenge in my life. It began with the divorce from my husband, followed by the two years of my father’s illness and his subsequent death. The person writing this today is a very different person from all those years ago. The person who is now writing the 2nd edition of The Buddhist Trader eight years later is a different character with a new personality and an ever deepening understanding of life.

How I started trading I decided to learn to trade when I got divorced. Within a brief period of time several events hit me at once. A new relationship for which I had had high hopes, did not work out and as already mentioned, my father to whom I was very close, became terminally ill and died. During that time my mother also became very ill but survived and became well again to live for another nine years after my father’s death. Those were challenging times. Yet, I was so used to suppressing my feelings and putting on the proverbial stiff upper lip that I would not allow feelings of insecurity and the pain I felt from the loss of the one person who had been the bedrock of my life, come to the surface. In fact, I did not know how to access my feelings. Feelings were for weaklings and I certainly wasn’t a weakling, heavens forbid. A couple of weeks after my father’s death I discovered that the Swiss broker who was managing my parents’ money in Switzerland had mismanaged my parents’ funds. My parents’ life savings and my inheritance had been eaten up by bad trades and excessive commission charges. The broker, an ex-employee from a major Swiss bank, had been churning the accounts. In the last years of his life, my father had not been able to travel to Switzerland with my mother and check on the investments in the accounts. The Swiss broker had been, let’s call it: “Rather economic with the truth,” and not fully disclosed what had happened during his watch. Whenever my mother would call him from time to time for an update on the accounts he would tell her that all was well and that they had done okay, even at a time when the general market was under water. Towards the end of my father’s life my mother became suspicious. She had not seen any physical statements for at least two years. To this day I remember the anger and rage I felt when I called up the Swiss broker and asked to be given the account balances of my parents’ accounts. The balance in my father’s account was almost zero, while my mother had around $ 15 000.00 left in her account. The broker was very reluctant to send me account statements going back five years but eventually gave into my demands. When I went through the last five years of the accounts, I discovered that 90 per cent of the money had disappeared in the last two years before my father’s death. I had to tell my mother that the money was gone. It was clear that the family home needed to be sold. This was one of the low points in my life and I vowed that I would make the money back trading. At that point I had been trading for two years and was heavily relying on assistance from an English broker who traded with a brokerage firm in America. The money from my mother’s account was transferred to America. I took the advice of the head of the American brokerage firm and agreed to option trades in a bid to grow the capital quickly. The American broker, who assured me that he had achieved outstanding returns trading options on behalf of his clients, started trading sugar options. I was surprised by the fervent trading activity in my mother’s small account. The daily statements I received from America were detailing complex options trades, which were difficult to understand. Each day I would spend time deciphering the trading statements in an attempt to figure out what the equity was in my mothers’ account. I

had only a very basic idea about options trading but knew enough to see that the trades where not working and that the account was being churned. I felt more and more uncomfortable and eventually decided to fly to America and talk to the broker face to face, as our telephone conversations provided no clarity of the trading situation. I flew out to the States and demanded that all the trades be closed out. We were down well over 50%. It had taken the American broker three months of trading to accumulate the loss. Around $ 2000.00 in commissions had accumulated which the company refunded, when I threatened to report them to FINRA. I think you can imagine how devastated I felt. There was no way that I could tell my mother about what had happened. I was convinced that it would finish her off and I decided to tell a white fib and pay her back the original funds out of my own account. In this way I camouflaged the loss and could kid myself into believing that all was well now. While this act soothed my bad conscience about my poor judgement call, the feelings of guilt and shame and inadequacy ran deep and would play out in my own trading in many different ways for a very long time. Deep down I felt that I let my mother and my late father down. I had promised my father on his deathbed to look after my mother. To me at that time that promise was like an oath never to be broken, and I had inadvertently broken it. I know, all this may sound rather melodramatic. I am telling you about this simply to illustrate how deep our emotions can run and how they can permeate every aspect of our lives, without our conscious awareness. Needless to say, I was unaware of how much I was affected by the events and the disappointment I felt in myself and the disappointment I felt about the people I had trusted. Even when we do what appears to be right in the moment, we can end up feeling responsible for actions from other people, which are beyond our control. Our conditioning, something about which you will hear a great deal in this book, has programmed us in this way. In those days I did not yet understand the principle that underpins every action in our lives.

You can only do the very best you are capable of in the moment If you knew better, you would act differently. If you had foresight you would use it. If you had learned to follow your intuition and inner guidance you would do it. It simply cannot be any different. This statement explains why we need to do everything in our power to grow our conscious awareness. Expanded conscious awareness is the vehicle that propels us to greater heights and releases us from the grips of social conditioning. My Catholic upbringing made me believe in a power outside of myself. I had rejected the teachings of the Catholic church for years, yet my emotions where still deeply rooted in lack and victimhood. The “Catholic guilt complex” I did not even know I had in those days, threw many a spanner in the works of progress and delayed the advancement of my goals. At the time when I agreed to have my mother’s money traded in America, I had a trading account with the same brokerage firm in America. It was traded by me and the British broker I had become friendly with. The broker and I would speak daily

discussing trade set ups which then would be placed in my American trading account. Andy, (not his real name) was a great salesman. He was charming, very convincing, persuasive and very opinionated, like many brokers. I misread his strength of conviction as market knowledge and went along with his ideas. He would suggest trades I would have never considered if I had traded by myself. The risks taken in the account were huge. Alas, I went along with the trades, believing that Andy knew much more about trading and risk management than I did. I lacked the confidence to believe in my own knowledge and follow my own gut instincts. How many of you, I wonder, have had similar experiences when dealing with brokers? I am cautious by nature and not willing to risk too much money on any individual trade. Betting the ranch on any one trade, no matter how good it seems, or trading without stops has never, ever been an issue in my personal trading. When working at the bank I learnt that there was no room for error, particularly, when it comes to dealing with other people’s money. In those days, if you made a mistake and the books did not tally at the end of the day, even if you were out by a penny, you were not allowed to go home until the books for the day were balanced. This deeply engrained code of ethics has kept my own personal trading mistakes small, but it did not stop me from making huge mistakes listening to the so called professionals in the first years of trading. Being in a group of traders with more experience gave me a false sense of confidence. You might well ask why I would listen to other traders and brokers against my own inner knowing. The answer is simple; I was brought up to ignore inner conflict and discomfort and do what I was told to do. I learnt that people in high positions had greater authority and therefore must have more knowledge than I. Many of us have this very common pattern. We have difficulty stepping into our own power, preferring instead to give away our power to some authority outside of ourselves. My parents believed that going against their life’s experience was unacceptable. So called protection came from aligning with people from well respected and “established” backgrounds. How many investors, I wonder, have lost their shirts believing that big banks are a safeguard for their financial future? Whenever I went against my parents’ dictums I would be told off and punished in some form. My well meaning parents believed that they always knew best, due to their longer life experience. They were very protective of me, only wanting the best for their precious daughter. Adherence to outdated behaviour codes and value systems derived from the collective values of society, rather than from within us are still taught at schools and handed down from generation to generation. I was brought up with a belief that obedience of rules is necessary if you want to get on in life, rather than using rules as guidance and listening to your inner instincts first. The well intentioned beliefs of parents stop many of us from stepping into our own inner knowing. It also prevents the development and use of our instincts. We all are born with this inner guidance but as we mature we gradually decouple from this knowing in favour of the logical mind. Very few people understand their own power of creation, it has been conditioned out of them.

True mastery and lasting success arrives when you re-connect to your own inner powers of creation While dealing with Andy I bowed to the “authority figure” every time. Andy had been trading for several years when I met him. He had a very strong personality. While I lacked confidence in myself and would give away my power to anybody who seemed to know more than I, Andy on the face of it, displayed a total belief in himself. His overconfidence was so overpowering that it crushed any burgeoning thoughts of opposition to his market opinions. Andy could not ever admit to being wrong. He always knew best, even in the face of obvious trading failure. Andy had a knack of bouncing back by deluding himself about his skills. His ability at self-deception was so deeply engrained that he could not allow another person’s point of view because that would challenge his own superiority. Alas, I could not see through the mind games he was playing with himself and with his clients. What appears to be obvious to me today was hidden from my awareness all those years ago. Things eventually came to a climax. Needless to say, my dealings with Andy were not profitable. We would have the odd winning trade and then we would give it all back and more. The account gradually declined. Over a period of two years we had lost 50 percent of my original trading account. It finally began to register with me that I could not carry on in this manner. Commissions were very expensive, costing $ 20.00 for a trade. I needed to start making money in order to live, let alone grow capital. Things were not looking great. As I said before, when I relate the story of my early trading days to you today a different person is writing… The lack of discernment and the inability of using my intuition have gradually been replaced with an entirely different sense of confidence after years of personal development work, while learning to trade correctly.

Life and trading are about doing the right thing, not about being right These words are easily said. I am sure, you will know what I am talking about on an intellectual level. I did too, yet the immense wisdom contained in those words eluded me for many years. Genpo Roshi’s words come to mind; he was for many years the highest ranking Buddhist Zen Master outside of Japan.

“It is far easier to become enlightened than becoming a decent human being” Doing the right thing automatically brings enlightenment. Grasp this piece of wisdom and your life as well as your trading will begin to flow. Before we go deeper into the strategies and techniques that bring out the master trader in you, I would like to share one more Waterloo story of my early trading life. The stories from my early years of learning are valuable lessons. You can possibly identify with much of what you have read? I hope that you have not made the mistakes I have made. With some luck, what you are reading here will ensure that you never ever fall as hard as I had to before I got the

message and began the long climb to trading with consistency and detachment from my ego.

Trading mistakes happen, but… In the early days of my trading career I had a trading account with an English trading firm who also manages clients’ funds. I had struck up a great relationship with one of the firm’s traders. John, (not his real name) traded by the seat of his pants. He had done very well for his clients. I decided that I wanted to trade alongside John, even though the owner of the company warned me that John’s trading style was high risk. At this point in my trading I had tried to trade with two brokers, neither had made me money. My investment account was down after the market crash of 9/11 and I was itching to make back the money and finally get into making big bucks. I knew deep down it was possible, even though success had eluded me thus far. I still had no notion of the difference between a high risk trade and a low risk trade and still lacked the confidence to follow my own trading ideas. I decided to trade part of the money in a separate account. One of my first trades was a position in the S&P. I had placed the trade thinking that I had traded two e-minis. The following day I got to my screen and found myself $ 2000.00 in the red. I had accidentally traded two big contracts. I called John for advice. John felt that the market would recover and advised me to stay in rather than closing out the position. The following day I was down another $ 2000.00. I called John again. He advised me to stay in the position. Stops were pointless, the market would recover. I followed his advice. The market had other ideas though. It continued heading south. Within a matter of 10 days when I finally closed out the position, I was down close enough to $ 20 000.00. I had taken a hit of twenty percent of my trading capital in one trade. All, because I could not face up to having made a mistake, which would have been easily rectified by getting out of the position when I realised that I had traded the wrong futures contract. Would I have stayed in that position had I not followed John’s advice? The answer to this question is a definite “no”. The fear of losing even more would have made me exit sooner. I managed to override those fears by seeking John’s advice on the trade. The lesson from this major debacle had not yet been learned. I found it incredibly difficult to take responsibility for my actions. I could easily justify this by reasoning with myself that I was doing the right and safe thing in seeking advice from a professional who knew the markets. My trades were safe with the professionals. It was almost as if the professionals had the magic wand that would turn the market in their favour at the blink of an eye. My trust in other people was far greater than trust in myself. I had not realised that in following other people’s advice blindly I was hugely disempowering myself, I was also prolonging my learning curve and setting myself up to destroying my self-esteem and trust in my abilities. Of course, none of the above had even vaguely occurred to me in those early days of trading. I felt miserable, became more and more nervous of trading to a point where I

was unable to even place small bets in my spread betting account and had reached the point of total melt down. I knew I had to stop trading, at least for a while. A period followed when I took a complete break from trading for 18 months. I used this sabbatical to immerse myself in the study of energy psychology and I started coaching during that time. When I returned to trading, I had another few years of learning ahead of me. Things had changed though. I had met my present partner, a professional trader and fund manager who taught me a lot about trading, market co-relations and the art of staying out of the market. Staying out when I feel that I might be missing some action is still one of my challenges today. Today, many years later, my emotional state is very different from those early years of initiation. I observe my mental programmes with indifference. I still dislike losing. However, when I lose it is not a big event. I have total confidence in my risk management because I have learnt the art of taking small losses. I have learnt to live with them. Those small losses have no impact on my trading account management. My ego is no longer invested in the outcome of a trade. Being stopped out of a trade has no more meaning than having to stop at three red traffic lights in a row when I am in a hurry. It does not matter. It is just one of those things…

Each trade is different. It is a fresh opportunity governed by a few simple rules I have learnt that the last trade has no relevance to the next trade. You must get to the place where you know from deep within that your past trading performance does not equal your future trading performance. It only equals your future trading performance if you keep on doing the same old things, repeating the same habits, the same thoughts and the same emotions regarding your trading. I know those words roll off the tongue and the pen easily. You have read it a million of times before: “Past performance is no guarantee for future performance”. Thank God for small mercies…if our future equalled the past, progress could never ever be made. Evolution would not exist. Take each trade based on its own merits and in isolation from anything you have traded before. Whether you made money or lost money means nothing. Good risk management is a by-product of sound trading psychology. When the correct mental strategies are in place, you do not have to discipline yourself into a mental straitjacket. On the contrary: The correct mental strategies will set you free to be free. Your only control is in your mindset.

Enlightenment as a means to trading success If you want your life to flow with ease and you desire to trade with effortless ease you must understand the true nature of your being. When you know your true nature, you become aware of the true nature of the world around you. This means that you know that you are spirit having a human experience. The awareness of your spiritual nature and the spiritual nature of everything in existence unlocks the door to mastery. When you begin to enter the levels of mastery you are shifting into a totally different appreciation of yourself. You enter a different state of being you, your identity shifts. When this happens, it is quite a magical feeling which enables you to grow in self-love. This self-love is not ego driven. It comes from the heart and is connected to the core of source. When you honour the spiritual aspect of your existence you are acknowledging the oneness of the universe of which you are an integral part. You are also acknowledging your own power of creation of everything you experience in life.

Enlightenment is self-knowledge and the expansion of your cognitive awareness Enlightenment means allowing light to shine in places where there was darkness. You cannot dispel darkness with more darkness. You can only dispel darkness with light. Knowledge is light. When you strive to understand yourself and understand your world better, you are bringing in more light. There is nothing strange or complicated about this fundamental law of the universe. The same fundamental laws that apply to us naturally apply to the markets too and when you appreciate this interaction fully, you simply will not be able to view the markets superficially anymore. Your trading will take on a different dimension as you will notice the fractal patterns of life repeating in different variations wherever you look. This is probably the only absolute truth out there. Acknowledging the workings of universal laws in every aspect of life is akin to acknowledging your spirituality. When you see yourself as a spiritual being you are aligning yourself with these laws in everything you do, including your trading. In other words; the mere realization that everything is basically made up from the same stuff, energy and light, the sense of separation gives way to a sense of oneness and love.

Spirituality has nothing to do with religion, as many people mistakenly believe

Spirituality is the understanding that you are the cosmos in individualized form. Trading shows you how the universe operates, if you connect consciously with the energy of your charts. Good trading is love made visible… As my insights in the underlying cosmic laws grew, my understanding of the nature of the markets deepened. The journey is ongoing because my knowledge and awareness of the workings of cosmic laws evolve. The journey is truly exciting. It can make your trading life much richer and more worthwhile. Knowing how the universe works behind the surface will be of particular value to you in the present, challenging market environment and the major shift we are experiencing in all aspects of life. I enjoy Elliott wave as a market mapping tool. Elliott wave of course is based on an in depth understanding of natural laws. Cycles are the bedrock of life as we know it and of the markets. I view some trading indicators in the same way. History repeats, alas, never in quite the same way. Our challenge as traders is to adjust all the time to changing market conditions and to correctly interpret the same old fractals in a new light of the ever evolving present moment. Moving from duality to experiencing a state of oneness will benefit your trading and investing strategies no matter what the market conditions are. It is a robust strategy that should be an important part of your daily trading plan.

Traders have much to learn from the wisdom traditions Nothing is new in this world. Universal laws and the principles of our existence have always been the same. The only thing that changes is our interpretation of the cycles as we evolve and grow in consciousness as human beings. I could also argue that the growth in conscious awareness is simply seeing a different perspective of cosmic creation. If the only variant is change, then change is here for us to enjoy and not to fear and resist. Imagine life without change. Each day, every hour of trading, every cycle would be totally predictable. The markets simply could not operate in this way because everybody would be placing the same trades. Constant change and varying degrees of unpredictability provide the fuel that makes the markets work. This is also true for life in general. The wheels of evolution are forever turning, that’s a given. The exact timing of the market turns and how they unfold is the unpredictable variable. The universe makes no mistakes. It is a perfect place for all of us…yet few realize it… The person who experienced enlightenment 2000 years ago would have a different enlightenment experience today. The collective consciousness is somewhat different and the internal representational system of a person is different from someone who lived 2000 years ago. Yet, the same evolutionary laws are at play and must be observed if you want to reach, what we commonly refer to as enlightenment. Enlightenment is basically a higher degree of cognitive awareness. It is not spiritual or religious. It simply refers to a more evolved state of being.

A very profound Zen Buddhist saying sums it up;

“Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water, after enlightenment, chop wood and carry water” The path unfolds in perfect order by perfect laws without a beginning or an end. Enlightenment itself is not the goal, neither is mastery. Both just happen along the way when you follow this path. You will still chop wood, carry water and trade, as long as there are the markets, but you will experience the activities in a very different way. Higher consciousness accesses a different set of information. Higher consciousness sees the order behind chaos and the love underneath the fear.

You will continue to evolve and improve your trading if you choose to walk the enlightened path Enlightened trading in the zone is a stage in your development and in your chosen pursuit of mastery. Along the way through the different stages of enlightenment your trading style will change. Don’t resist the change and don’t judge the urge to change your trading style. The many professional traders I have worked with trade longer time frames. I have yet to meet an experienced professional trader who has been in the game for a decade or longer who trades very short term time frames.

Enlightenment accelerates your evolution Boundaries dissolve, the path becomes clearer, obstacles begin to vanish. The priorities in life start to change. You begin to realize that THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS FEELING GOOD. Forcing yourself to trade just because you have been conditioned to “take your trades” is a mental trap. You cannot be your best when you are feeling down and out of sorts. Force does not rule the universe. Slowly a new awareness will dawn on you; FORCE IS NOT THE DOMINANT RULE of law in the universe, SYNCHRONICITY IS THE DOMINANT RULE. Synchronicities happen when you allow source to flow through you. Once you understand that you are the source through which many different channels of creation flow, you allow more diversity into your (trading) life. Source has more than one abundance channel for you. This is hard for traders to see who are locked in one trading style as if it were the only means of generating money. For example, two channels I love are buying and selling antiques and investing in projects that are at the cutting edge of neuro-science because they express my love for life and helping others lead better lives. Naturally my values have changed over time. It is more important to me today to share my experiences of what I have learnt in the pursuit of trading mastery and to help traders and investors reach their ultimate goals.

Trader, investor, lawyer, company director, we are all the same. Everyone one aspires to living in harmony and having abundance, health and inner joy in life. The only thing that is different for all of us is the way in which we choose to express this desire.

Trading in harmony with the markets is love made visible…. When you are in harmony with your desire abundance flows to you I love helping traders to lead more fulfilled lives, have greater self-esteem and experience a connection to their source through their own channel of unique expression. The source from which everything flows can only be found in you because you are it. You are the vital part that allows creation to express itself in its infinite magnificence... If some of you understand this, it is worth the many hours spent writing this book and sharing my experiences. To me helping you reach the next level of your conscious evolution, the level where you know that all you are seeking is already there and by awaking the eternal healer and creator in you, is a gift that goes beyond teaching you how to trade. It is the ultimate home coming that will be with you beyond a lifetime. You are constantly changing and evolving with the cosmos. Once you learn to go with the flow of this universal principle, you will experience a sense of freedom. You will no longer be the slave to ego considerations as the dominant part of your life. Instead, you will learn to live and work from a more expansive point of view: You will live in alignment with the rhythm of the universe. Alignment means closing the gap from A to B. When you are fully aligned with your desires and with your life there is no gap to close.

Trading in the zone is all about ALIGNMENT In order to trade in the zone, you have to unlearn those old programs which have created your beliefs of what it means to be a “civilised” human being. Much of what you are reading may be new territory for you. You may or may not agree with my views at this point. One thing is for sure though, you will only know what I am talking about if you allow yourself to go beyond the intellectual understanding and experience for yourself the innate wisdom of this paradigm. The principles of this paradigm are not new. It is as old as our existence, but it is seen and interpreted through the eyes of today’s challenges. Hopefully, when you are finished with this book and perhaps read it more than once, you will have a very good idea of the concepts. If you are open and willing to implement the new life strategies and follow through with new practices, this book can be transformational and give you a new direction that will last a lifetime. Dealing with the psychology of trading means examining your beliefs for their relevance in your life right now. You will learn the latest techniques which are scientifically proven to increase brain harmony and ultimately regenerate the entire mind/body matrix.

I also call the formula “The Happy Venn Diagram of Environment, Body and Mind”. The formula will hopefully help many traders, investors and anyone who wants to lead more fulfilling lives and successfully navigate the challenging changes of our times which are occurring in all areas of our lives. The human mind has learnt to make things complicated. Complexity derives from the ego. It is a way to prove our importance in the three-dimensional world of control, competition and self-aggrandisement.

Trading is not that complicated Support will always be support and resistance will always be resistance. Experience and learning good chart reading skills will assist you in evaluation how price will get from A to B We make trading more complex, inventing more indicators and complex trading strategies. The pace of trading has changed considerably in the last few years… #########################################################################

You can purchase The Buddhist Trader on my website:

https://www.mentalstrategiesfortraders.com/the-buddhist-trader

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