You are a...

Strategic Trader

Congratulations! As a Strategic Trader, you

have all three core qualities of top traders. You
have potential to excel in the markets—if you
are willing to do a few things.

First, are you willing to take complete

responsibility for your trading results? There
is no room to blame the market, your broker,
your education, or anything else. Second, can
you change your thinking so that you treat your
trading as a business? Initially, this means
writing a thorough business plan. Third, could
you develop a trading system that fits you? Most
people want to start here, at the technical side
and back end of trading; however, I recommend
saving this until you have completed the other
tasks first. My studies have revealed that your
psychological biases and issues will affect your
trading system development if you have not
taken the time to work on yourself first as the
core of your trading.

All those things just mentioned are what you can read about in our weekly newsletter. Thank
you for signing up for it. Should you find it less than useful, you can click on the unsubscribe
link at the bottom of the newsletter anytime you desire.

Helping traders become their best is our mission at the Van Tharp Institute and we’ve
helped thousands of traders do that for over
Top Three Core Trader Qualities: 25 years. We offer excellent educational and
training programs designed for both beginning
and advanced traders/investors. If you have
1. The ability to see the big
questions or would just like more information,
picture, new possibilities and
please visit our web site at www.vantharp.com.
connections between things.

2. Making decisions based on
logic and analysis.
3. Being decisive, orderly and
doing things sequentially.
So let’s get to your report. The next page
describes your trader type based on your
answers. Look for what rings true for you and
keep in mind that no individual will match up
exactly with a profile. Next, you’ll discover how
to leverage your strengths and challenges to
become a better and more profitable trader. And
finally, we list the trader types and their potential
for success in the markets.

102A Commonwealth Ct. Cary, NC USA T 919.466.0043 F 919.466.0408 www.vantharp.com

 Strategic Trader Type
As a Trader... you have all three core qualities that are essential to being a great trader (i.e.,
you have the ability to see the big picture, new possibilities and connections between things;
you make decisions based on logic and analysis and you are decisive, orderly and do things
sequentially). You have an original mind and a great drive to implement your ideas and
achieve your goals.
Example Trader
Paul Tudor Jones

SUMMARY Our best example of a

strategic trader is Paul Tudor
YOU probably live in a world of ideas and strategic planning. You value intelligence, knowledge, and being Jones. Jones has been one
competent. These are great qualities for a trader/investor. In fact, you have this and all three core qualities of the world’s best hedge
that are essential to being a great trader (i.e., you have the ability to see the big picture, new possibilities
fund managers. And when
and connections between things; you make decisions based on logic and analysis and you are decisive,
the funds he had under
orderly and do things sequentially). You have an original mind and a great drive to implement your ideas
and achieve your goals. Thus, if trading success is important to you, you’ll probably find a way to achieve it.
management surpassed a
billion dollars, he hired a well-
You are quick to see patterns in the market and develop a perspective that allows you to take advantage of known motivational speaker
it. Consequently, we recommend that you study what great traders typically do. If you do, you’ll probably to coach him on what we now
become one of them. call “top-down discipline.”

You are an avid learner and thinker. Understanding trading and trading systems will probably be something Today he lives by an
that is quite easy for you to grasp. You easily understand abstract and complex theories and can be a unbelievable routine and
master of conceptual and analytical thinking. schedule because he simply
must be the best. He’s never
If you become committed to trading success, you’ll probably have no problem developing a business plan had a down year. His worst
to help you succeed as a trader. In addition, you tend to be independent, which is an essential quality of
performance was in 2000,
traders, and have high standards for your performance as a trader.
when offshore Tudor BVI
As a trader, you’ll probably focus on observing the markets and generating ideas and possibilities for
Global Portfolio fund delivered
generating profits. This is one of the primary reasons that, if you commit to it, you have the potential to be an
only 11.6%. According to
excellent trader/investor. In addition, since you have all of the primary qualities that most of the top traders Forbes, Paul Tudor Jones
have, if you apply yourself, then your chances of success are very high. ranks 123 among the world’s
richest people.

TRADING STRENGTHS TRADING CHALLENGES Paul Tudor Jones is known

• Originality and drive to be your best;
willingness to follow your ideas through to
completion.
• Quickly see patterns and possibilities,
with the ability to rapidly hypothesize and
generate low-risk trading ideas.
• You could probably generate a trading
business plan and trading systems quite
easily and naturally.
for saying, “I’m always
• You may be so logical that you don’t thinking about losing money
recognize when emotions are causing you as opposed to making money.
to self-destruct.
Don’t focus on making money,
• You have a strong desire to be right, even focus on protecting what you
to the extent of perfectionism. This might have.”
cause you to never actually trade because
you continually are trying to develop or buy
better systems.
• You may be susceptible to the loss trap.
Therefore, you may not honor your stops
because you want to be right about your
trades.

102A Commonwealth Ct. Cary, NC USA T 919.466.0043 F 919.466.0408 www.vantharp.com

 LEVERAGING YOUR
STRENGTHS AND
ADDRESSING YOUR
CHALLENGES AS A
STRATEGIC TRADER

LEVERAGING YOUR STRENGTHS AND ADDRESSING YOUR CHALLENGES AS A

STRATEGIC TRADER

As a Strategic Trader, you have high aspirations and standards and are more than
capable of doing things well on your own. However, I know you want to be the very best
and learn from the very best.

LEVERAGING YOUR STRENGTHS

Strength #1 – Originality, Drive
You have the kind of psychological
profile that lends itself to success
in the markets. Now that you know
that, what do you do? Start here.
Read the Article “What Is Involved in
Peak Performance Trading?”
Strength #2 – Rapidly Identify Patterns
If you are trading, are you using
a complete and well thought out
system? Do you know what a
complete trading system entails? If
not, your trading results would benefit
greatly by understanding that and as
a Strategic Trader, you can excel
at systems development. Read the
Article “What Is a Trading System?”
Strength #3 – Ability to Plan
You could probably generate a
trading business plan and trading
systems quite easily and naturally.
Professional traders use a business
plan as a guide for their business and
trading systems as guides to their
trading. Do you view your trading
as a business yet? Are you trading
systems? If not, read the following
article. Read the Article “17 Steps”

102A Commonwealth Ct. Cary, NC USA T 919.466.0043 F 919.466.0408 www.vantharp.com

 As a Strategic Trader, you have high aspirations and standards and are more than
capable of doing things well on your own. However, I know you want to be the very best
and learn from the very best.

ADDRESSING YOUR CHALLENGES

Challenge #1 – Recognizing Mistakes: Logic over Emotion
As a Strategic Trader you are probably so logical, that you don’t even recognize when
your emotions are causing you to self-destruct. You must overcome the tendency to
have your logic hinder your ability to recognize mistakes; repeated mistakes equal self-
sabotage.
Read the Article “Mistakes”

Challenge #2 – Perfectionism
You have a strong desire to be right, even to the extent of perfectionism. This might cause
you to never actually trade because you are trying to develop or buy better systems
continually.

You probably don’t need people telling you what to do and may even find that your
perfectionism has served you in many ways throughout your life. However, in the trading
arena it would be practical to avoid perfectionism so that you are able to learn the best
ways to evaluate trading systems.
Read the Article “The Fundamentals of Tharp Think”

Challenge #3 – Need to be Right

You may not honor your stops because you want to be right about your trades. This
can lead to an even bigger issue and make you susceptible to the “loss trap.” To win at
trading, you must learn about the loss trap and how to overcome it.
Read the Article “The Loss Trap”

Read on for Additional Resources....

102A Commonwealth Ct. Cary, NC USA T 919.466.0043 F 919.466.0408 www.vantharp.com

 ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
In addition to the articles mentioned above, the Van Tharp Institute has
numerous books, courses, and aids to help the Strategic Trader improve.

As a very logical person, you may struggle at first with the idea that you don’t
trade the markets, but instead you trade your beliefs about the markets.
In my book, Trading Beyond the Matrix, the chapter, “Understanding
the Impact of Beliefs and How I Create My Experience” will give you
tremendous insights into understanding what this means and how it can
have a huge impact on your trading. Also, you’ll likely relate to many of the
traders who have written chapters for this book. While it is never specified,
many of them have the same trader type as you.

As a Strategic Trader, you like clarity in your information. I have provided

a lot of information on successful trading plainly organized in my book
Super Trader: Make Consistent Profits in Good and Bad Markets. The five
sections of the book delve into the key areas for every trader to focus on
for success: working on yourself, business planning, trading systems, position sizing, and monitoring
your psychology. Whether these terms are familiar or brand new to you, Super Trader’s fifty chapters
are all short and each has one or two actionable ideas to help you improve your trading. It’s become
my favorite book and there are fun parts in it you would probably enjoy.

The second edition of the Trade your Way to Financial Freedom book contains a number of chapters
that Strategic Traders would find especially useful. The book has a lot of material on trading systems.
Most companies that offer trading systems sell a setup and an entry as the whole system but that is
only a part (and a relatively unimportant part) of what I view as a trading system. The book includes
discussions of several trading systems and a number of ideas that can be easily turned into systems.
Strategic Traders have a natural inclination to put this kind of information to great use.

As a Strategic Trader, I know you have a strong commitment to become the best you can be. If you
are ready to back that up with some time and effort, I recommend the Peak Performance Home Study
Course. Strategic Traders will find value in all five volumes but I’d like to point out two of them in
particular. Volume 2 covers the topic of stress. Strategic Traders tend to be highly logical and the
stress process can involve some illogical inputs. This means that you might not recognize stress, yet
your trading will endure the effects of that stress. Volume 4 on discipline would also be very valuable
for you. Discipline involves feelings, which, as a Strategic Trader, you are not attuned to understand.
This blind area for you can lead to self-sabotage. Have you ever known what you should do but then
do something else? That’s self-sabotage and as strange as it may sound to your highly logical brain,
recognizing your feelings will help you be more successful. The 5th volume on sound decisions will
help you improve an area that is already strong for you. Learn the importance of decision strategies
to help you make even better decisions.

Learn how to use your analytical skills to understand risk and how to put risk to work for you. Along
with Peak Performance Home Study, you can also take Investment Psychology Inventory Profile to
examine in even further detail your strengths and weaknesses. To view and learn more about our
entire line of products, please visit www.vantharp.com/products.asp.

102A Commonwealth Ct. Cary, NC USA T 919.466.0043 F 919.466.0408 www.vantharp.com

 LIST OF THARP TRADER TYPES AND THEIR POTENTIAL
FOR SUCCESS IN THE MARKETS

HIGH POTENTIAL FOR MARKET SUCCESS:

Strategic Trader
Planning Trader

GOOD POTENTIAL FOR TRADING SUCCESS WITH SOME WORK:

Detailed Trader
Facilitative Trader
Innovative Trader
Spontaneous Trader
Independent Trader
Administrative Trader
Values Driven Trader
Socially Responsible Trader
Accurate Trader
Adventurous Trader

POTENTIAL FOR TRADING SUCCESS WITH LOTS OF WORK OR

HAVE OTHERS MANAGE THEIR MONEY:

Supportive Trader
Artistic Trader
Fun Loving Trader

102A Commonwealth Ct. Cary, NC USA T 919.466.0043 F 919.466.0408 www.vantharp.com

 THANK YOU for taking the Tharp Trader Test, which evaluates psychological tendencies relating
to how you gather, store, comprehend and act upon information and input. After modeling and
studying thousands of traders, I’m able to help you understand a little about yourself with just a few
questions, based on a much lengthier profile that we use to evaluate traders. This test was designed
simply to introduce you to some of the issues that affect your trading.

After all, YOU are the single most important factor in your trading performance but how well do
you understand that? How well do you know yourself, and what kind of internal forces are at work
when you trade? The Tharp Trader Test helps you identify strengths that should help you trade and
challenges that may interfere with your trading. It also helps evaluate your possession of the three
core qualities of top traders:

1. The ability to see the big picture, new possibilities and connections between things.

2. Making decisions based on logic and analysis.

3. Being decisive, orderly and doing things sequentially.

For more information, click on the links in this report or visit our website at www.vantharp.com.

You will start receiving your newsletter sometime in the next month (or sooner). Until then you can find issues (current and for
many years back) on our website under the Newsletter link at the top of the home page.

Also, be sure to read each section of the Tharp Think Concepts if you have not already. These concepts take the mystery out of
trading by helping you understand who you are as a trader, how your personal psychology can work for you instead of against
you, how to think about and manage risk, and how to develop winning trading systems.

Again, thank you very much for taking the Tharp Trader Test and good luck to you.

Sincerely,

Van K. Tharp
Trading Coach
Founder and President,
The Van Tharp Institute
www.vantharp.com

!
What if you have read this report and only some of it or even very little of it seems to apply to you? That’s possible. To make this test
fast to take (and very low cost!), I kept the sampling questions to a minimum; the resulting trader profile is merely a rough estimate of
who you are. If it seems off-base, you could consider taking the test again or simply just be aware that the results in this profile are not
you; they are an extremely simple model of you. In most cases, however, I have found it to be fairly accurate. If a more scientifically
rigorous psychological profile interests you, we offer that on our website in the products section.

102A Commonwealth Ct. Cary, NC USA T 919.466.0043 F 919.466.0408 www.vantharp.com