You are an...

Independent Trader
Congratula,ons! As an Independent Trader, you already have two of the top three core quali,es of
successful traders: you are able to grasp the big picture and you have strong analy,cal skills. With
possession of two of the three core quali,es, you have poten,al to do well in the markets—if you are
willing to work on being more decisive and a few other things.

Your Top Two Core Trader Quali0es:

The ability to see the big Making decisions based

picture, new possibili,es on logic and analysis.
and connec,ons
between things.

Are you willing to take complete responsibility for your trading results? There is no room to blame the market, your
broker, your educa;on, or anything else. Could you develop a trading system that fits you? And are you aware of the
psychological biases and issues that will affect you as a trader execu;ng that system?

All those things just men;oned are what you can read about in our Weekly Trader Insights that you are now
subscribed to. You can click on the unsubscribe link at the boDom of the emails any;me you desire.

Since the passing of Van (in 2022) and the subsequent closure of The Van Tharp Ins;tute, our mission of helping
traders become their best has been sustained by Gabriel Gramma5dis, Van’s close friend, Original Super Trader
Graduate in 2010 and system instructor at the ins;tute. Gabriel offers personal mentoring and structured training
programs designed for both beginning and advanced traders.

To learn more, please visit www.intufx.com or email [email protected]

So, let’s get more into your report. You’ll discover how to leverage your strengths and challenges to become a beDer
and more consistent trader. And finally, we list the trader types and their poten;al for success in the markets.

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Independent Trader Type
As a Trader... if the markets interest you, you’ll probably endeavor to develop a logical
explanation for how they work. This is because you love theoretical ideas and abstract
concepts (in fact, much more so than people interactions). This can be great for trading
success, if you don’t get too theoretical.

Summary Example Trader

YOU will probably endeavor to develop a logical explana,on for how “Data” from Star Trek
the markets work. This is because you love theore,cal ideas and
Independent Traders like their
abstract concepts (in fact, much more so than people interac,ons).
privacy and prefer anonymity. They
This can be great for trading success, if you don’t get too theore,cal.
don’t stand out, in fact, they are hard
This type of trader profile suggests that you value knowledge above
to find. Those who have achieved
all else. As a result, you’ll be genera,ng new ideas about the market
any level of recogni;on such as
or trying to disprove the ideas that you learn from others constantly.
William Eckhardt, the mathema;cian
This can be a blessing, as a trader, if you transform this skill into of Market Wizard’s fame, avoid
developing a business plan for your trading. On the other hand, it interviews and photographers.
could also be a challenge if you cannot translate it into a sound plan.
Independent Traders tend to be
You probably are quiet, contained, and adaptable. In addi,on, we flawlessly logical and a storehouse of
suspect that you can focus in depth on solving a problem in knowledge. A great (public) example is
whatever areas interest you. As a result, you can probably excel in Data from Star Trek, The Next
the trading arena, if you don’t get too focused on concepts that do Genera;on.
not work.
Data, aXer kissing a woman, was
You tend to be skep,cal, analy,cal, and some,mes cri,cal. These are asked for his thoughts. He responded,
also good quali,es for a trader. In addi,on, you probably are very “I was reconfiguring the warp field
independent, unconven,onal, and original. These quali,es are parameters, analyzing the collected
perfect for traders/investors because they will drive you to develop a works of Charles Dickens, calcula;ng
system or methodology that FITS YOU rather than aRempt to use the maximum pressure I could safely
something that someone else has developed. apply to your lips, and considering a
new food supplement for Spot . . .”
Because you have simple day-to-day needs you are easy to get along You can also understand Data from
with; personal conflict doesn’t really threaten you. this quote, “I am programmed to
evolve—to beDer myself.”
You have two of the three quali,es that we find in the best traders/
investors. Thus, if you apply yourself, you have the poten,al to do If you don’t like Data as a prototype,
very well as a trader/investor. then perhaps these historical figures
with Independent Trader types might
appeal to you: Albert Einstein,
Socrates, or Abraham Lincoln?

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Leveraging your strengths and
addressing your challenges as an
independent trader
As an Independent Trader you can see the big picture and being able to do so helps you take your trading ideas
and implement them almost immediately. If these trading ideas fail, you are also capable of quickly
determining and analyzing why.
.

LEVERAGING YOUR STRENGTHS

Strength #1 – Ability to Trade in New Ways Quickly

You find it easy to see trading ideas that you like and can trade them quickly.
However, what does a proper trading system look like and what does it consist
of? Read the following ar,cle to help you understand the building blocks to a
successful trading system.

Read the Ar>cle “A Structured Approach to Trading Mastery”

Strength #2 – Ability to Rapidly Assess What’s Working

Your mind can assess quickly whether things are working. This is a valuable trait for traders.
You can use this skill to consider effec,vely which of your beliefs about trading the markets
are helping you and which are cos,ng you money. If you don’t quite understand how that
might be incredibly useful to a trader, read the following ar,cle.

Read the Ar>cle “Your Beliefs About Trading”

Strength #3 – Working through Conceptual Challenges

You enjoy figuring things out more than most. There are a few key concepts you will need
to grasp to become a successful trader. The following ar,cle goes into detail in each of
these areas.

Read the Ar>cle “Tharp Think ”

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As an Independent Trader, you find it easy to see
trading ideas that you like and can trade them quickly.
Your mind can assess quickly whether things are working. This
is a valuable trait for traders.

ADDRESSING YOUR CHALLENGES

Challenge #1 – Social Isola>on

Although this may not seem like a par,cularly bothersome challenge because you
prefer to work alone, trading could come to dominate your life. This in turn could
unbalance your life as well as upset others, par,cularly if you have a spouse. The good
news is that you don’t have to allow trading to overtake your life to be successful at it.
Read the following ar,cle to understand how to be in control of your trading by
crea,ng your own ‘Trading Game’ that fits your needs and ensures a healthy balance.

Read the Ar>cle “Your Game Your Rules”

Another sugges,on, especially for you: get away from your screens in the evenings
and periodically take real vaca,ons with no trading.

Challenge #2 – Rejec>ng Workable Systems

Independent Traders tend to have a working theory about how things are. Therefore, you
may reject or abandon workable systems if the logic isn’t clear, especially if you don’t
understand the systems boundaries ahead of ,me.

Read the Ar>cle “Being Right and Making Money are Not Equivalent”

Challenge #3 – Accessing Your Feelings

Unlike the android Data from the Star Trek TV series, you are a human being so you
already have emo,ons. You just do not pay that much aRen,on to them. Ignoring your
emo,ons can have damaging consequences on your trading; however, understanding
your feelings can help you take more money out of the markets. This probably seems
illogical to you but the following ar,cle may help you make more sense of this idea.

Read the Ar>cle “Feeling and Trading”

Read on for Addi,onal Resources....

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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

In addi,on to the ar,cles men,oned above, the Van Tharp

Ins,tute has numerous books to help the Independent
Trader become beRer.

Keeping balance in your life is very important and it may be

an area that is going underserved in your life. Van’s book,
Trading Beyond the Matrix, will help you add perspec,ve
about why Van believed you don’t trade the markets, you
trade your beliefs in the market. In this book, he provided
you with thorough material to beRer examine your own
personal inner-workings. You will relate to the chapters
wriRen by other real-life traders who share their
breakthroughs in personal transforma,on. Also, your orderly
side will seek great excitement by examining the checklists
for addressing some of the most cri,cal areas of trading.

As an Independent Trader, you like clarity in your

informa,on. Van provided a lot of informa,on on successful
trading plainly organized in his book Super Trader: Make
Consistent Profits in Good and Bad Markets. The five sec,ons
of the book delve into the key areas for every trader to focus
on for success: working on yourself, business planning,
trading systems, posi,on sizing, and monitoring your
psychology. Whether these terms are familiar or brand new
to you, Super Trader’s fify chapters are all short and each
has one or two ac,onable ideas to help you improve your
trading.

The second edi,on of Van’s book Trade Your Way to Financial

Freedom book contains a number of chapters that
Independent 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 rela,vely
unimportant part) of what Van viewed as a trading system.
The book includes discussions of several full trading systems
and a number of ideas that can be easily turned into
systems. Independent Traders have a natural inclina,on to
put this kind of informa,on to great use.

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As an Independent Trader, you love new ideas. If you are ready to discover
and generate ideas about yourself and have a strong commitment to being
a top trader, then we recommend the Peak Performance Home Study Course.
It includes five volumes of readings and exercises.

Independent Traders will find value in the concepts in all five volumes of the
course, but we’d like to point out two of them in par;cular. Volume 2 covers
the topic of stress—an important area for an Independent Trader to
understand because you most likely are not aDuned to detec;ng it. Stress
can have damaging effects on your trading but the biggest danger comes
from not recognizing it in the first place. This manual not only helps you
understand the sources and effects of stress on your trading but also how
to manage it effec;vely.

The other volume you would find interes;ng is on a_tudes. Independent

Traders tend to be great logical thinkers but not par;cularly conscious of
how the non-logical parts of themselves affect their choices and their
ac;ons. These include goals, emo;ons, values, and memories among others.
These factors have a tremendous effect on your trading whether you realize
it or not. The a_tudes volume will help you become more aware of the
forces at work within you and get them to help you be successful in your
trading.

Learn how to use your analy;cal skills to understand risk and how to put
risk to work for you.

To view and learn more about our en;re line of products, please visit:

www.vantharp.com/home-study

LOOKING FOR A MORE HANDS-ON, INTERACTIVE

LEARNING EXPERIENCE?
Original Super Trader Graduate and Peak Performance Coach Gabriel
Grammatidis offers workshops, e-courses and group mentoring to
significantly speed up your Trader Development path. It is not uncommon
that traders trapped
get for many years in the repetitive cycle of mistakes and inconsistency, also known as the boom-
bust cycle. In fact, Investopedia estimates that less than 10% of traders will be successful. Gabriel and the IntuFX
Trading Community apply simulation technology in combination with Deep Practice so to turn what might’ve been a
long, frustrating process done in solitude, into a joyful process of exponential skill growth. This is how successful and
consistent traders can be developed in less than a year.

What Van Tharp said about Gabriel – “You’ll get more than strategies… You’ll work with a true mentor and fellow
traders on your journey to trading mastery.”

Take your trading to the next level and learn in a class-room like of setting with a committed group of like-
minded traders across the world. For more info, please visit:

IntuFX Resources

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List of Tharp Trader types and
their poten6al for success in the markets

High poten>al for market success:

Strategic Trader
Planning Trader

Good poten>al for trading success with some work:

Detailed Trader
Facilita,ve Trader
Innova,ve Trader
Spontaneous Trader
Independent Trader
Administra,ve Trader
Values Driven Trader
Socially Responsible Trader
Accurate Trader
Adventurous Trader

Poten>al for trading success with lots of work or have others manage their money:

Suppor,ve Trader
Ar,s,c Trader

Fun Loving Trader

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THANK YOU for taking the Tharp Trader Test, which evaluates
psychological tendencies rela,ng to how you gather, store,
comprehend and act upon informa,on and input. Afer modeling
and studying thousands of traders, we’re able to help you
understand a liRle about yourself with just a few ques,ons, 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.

Afer 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 iden,fy strengths that should
help you trade and challenges that may interfere with your trading. It
also helps evaluate your possession of the three core quali,es of top
traders: Dr.
Dr. Van
VanKKTharp,
Tharp,armedarmedwithwitha aPh.D.
Ph.D.in in
psychology and featured
psychology and several losing in the Original
The ability to see the big picture, new possibili,es and Market Wizards,
experiences realized
in the market,that perhaps the
realized
1
connec,ons between things. poor
that perhaps the poor results thatinhe’d
results that he’d been geCng the
markets
been geAng in the markets had morehad
at the beginning of his career
2 Making decisions based on logic and analysis. more
to do to do him
with withthan
him than the markets
the markets
themselves. He conducted
themselves. So his quest began in-depthforresearch
how
to determine the qualiHes that great traders
3 Being decisive, orderly and doing things sequen,ally. he could become a beEer trader. He
and investors had, and his research uncovered
conducted in-depth research to
ten disHnct areas that were important to
For more informa,on, click on the links in this report or visit determine the qualiHes that great
trading success.
our website. traders and investors had, and his
researchGrammaHdis,
Gabriel uncovered ten disHnctSuper
an original areasTrader
that over
with were40 important to trading
years of trading experience and
www.vantharp.com www.intufx.com asuccess.
passionate trader coach at the Van Tharp
InsHtute for over a decade, is known to be one
You have already started to receive your free Weekly Trader Insights. These
of Van’sstudies led to the creaHon
most accomplished studentsof who
a has
It contains a wide array of valuable informa,on for Traders, by Traders 176 quesHon
successfully test called
adopted Van’stheconcepts and
Investment Psychology
trading research into his own Inventory
trading and
that have been mentored and trained by Dr. Van Tharp.
Profile based around these ten areas,
mentoring.
Also, be sure to read each sec,on of the Tharp Think Concepts if you and aNer tesHng thousands of traders
APer furtheryears,
over many independent research
it has proven on trader
to be a
have not already. These concepts take the mystery out of trading by development, Gabriel has carefully designed a
great indicator of success in the
helping you understand who you are as a trader, how your personal structured, high-performance program which
markets.
psychology can work for you instead of against you, how to think regularly creates consistent traders in under a
about and manage risk, and how to develop winning trading systems. year.
The Tharp Trader Test is a mini version
of this extensive test that is designed
Read about Gabriel’s Journey with Van and
Thank you very much for taking the Tharp Trader Test and good luck to provide a snapshot of the various
visit for more info www.intufx.com.
to you! types of traders that Dr. Tharp has
idenHfied.
Sincerely,
Gabriel Gramma;dis and Dr. Van Tharp (in our hearts and thoughts) *
* Van Tharp passed away peacefully in 2022

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