If you asked me to distill trading down to its simplest form, I would say that it is a pattern recognition numbers game. We use market analysis to identify the patterns, define the risk, and determine when to take profits. The trade either works or it doesn't. In any case, we go on to die next trade. It's that simple, but it's certainly not easy. In fact, trading is probably the hardest thing you'll ever attempt to be successful at. That's not because it requires intellect; quite the contrary! But because the more you think you know, the less successful you'll be.

Trading is hard because you have to operate in a state of not having to know, even though your analysis may turn out at times to be "perfectly" correct. To operate in a state of not having to know, you have to properly manage your expectations. To properly manage your expectations, you must realign your mental environment so that you believe without a shadow of a doubt in the five fundamental truths. In this chapter, I am going to give you a trading exercise that will integrate these truths about the market at a functional level in your mental environment. In the process, I'll take you through the three stages of development of a trader.

The first stage is the mechanical stage. In this stage, you:

1. Build the self-trust necessary to operate in an unlimited environment. 2. Learn to flawlessly execute a trading system.

3. Train your mind to think in probabilities (the five fundamental truths). 4. Create a strong, unshakeable belief in your consistency as a trader.

Once you have completed this first stage, you can then advance to the subjective stage of trading. In this stage, you use anything you have ever learned about the nature of market movement to do whatever it is you want to do. There's a lot of freedom in this stage, so you will have to learn how to monitor your susceptibility to make the kind of trading errors that are the result of any unresolved selfvaluation issues I referred to in the last chapter. The third stage is the intuitive stage. Trading intuitively is the most advanced stage of development. It is the trading equivalent of earning a black belt in the martial arts.

The difference is that you can't try to be intuitive, because intuition is spontaneous. It doesn't come from what we know at a rational level. The rational part of our mind seems to be inherently mistrustful of information received from a source that it doesn't understand. Sensing that something is about to happen is a form of knowing that is very different from anything we know rationally.

I've worked with many traders who frequently had a very strong intuitive sense of what was going to happen next, only to be confronted with the rational part of themselves that consistently, argued for another course of action. Of course, if they had followed their intuition, they would have experienced a very satisfying outcome. Instead, what they ended up with was usually very unsatisfactory, especially when compared with what they otherwise perceived as possible. The only way I know of that you can try to be intuitive is to work at setting up a state of mind most conducive to receiving and acting on your intuitive impulses.