The real purpose of trading is not to make money. If that's your goal you probably struggle with it a lot. But all of the following tend to work.

If you goal is to be a great trader, then you probbly will do well.

If you goal is to use trading as a way to measure your self-development, then you will probably do well.

If you just love trading and that's why you do it, then as long as you are willing to work on yourself you will probably do well.

Those, in my experience, are the key motivations that bring success in trading.

Posted by Van K Tharp at 12:17 AM | Permalink

I find that much of the material I teach is timeless. However, I've said it all before in my workshops, writings, and newsletters.

I write a monthly column in Tharp's Thoughts on my market commentary. And although I could add something weekly here, I don't think it serves any purpose. My comments on the market will have nothing to do with your success.

I could teach you psychological principles of success. And, in fact, I started to list some of the critical ones in past posts. However, as I got further and further into the core of what was important, people who are not working on themselves regularly started to get more upset with the posts. And that certainly isn't my purpose.

As a result, I've decided to use this post to answer questions. To start with each week I'll select the best question I've received and answer it here. If I start to get lots of GOOD questions, then I'll update the frequency of my posts.

If you'd like your question answered, please send them to info@iitm.com with the subject line being QUESTION FOR THE BLOG. Those will get forward to me, and I'll select the best to answer.

However, I typically teach using the Socratic method because the real answers are within you. So don't be surprised if my answer has a few questions back that you need to consider in order to get an answer that fits you.

Posted by Van K Tharp at 09:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

This is not all of the solution. My actual answer is much more detailed, but this is the best I'm willing to do on a public forum.

We live in a universe filled with energy that we can tap into if and when we are aware of it. Those who are creating problems tend to manipulate others (because they feel week and insecure) to gain power and money. They end up making others feel weak and ready to fight back to regain their energy.

This competition for energy will end when we experience a connection to the power within all of us. Much of my coaching is about helping people channel into this sort of power.

Knowing what you are all about, your purpose in life, will make it much easier to tap into the power of the universe. When you are on purpose, mysterious things seem to happen to keep you on track.

As more and more people get attuned to their purpose and to their inner power, such conflicts as I have talked about in other posts will end.

Posted by Van K Tharp at 09:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Let's say everyone in the world was playing a game, only they didn't know it. Now if most people decide that winning the game comes from helpng eveyone win, then what would happen is that everyone would win. I was amazed to learn that some American Indian had (and still do to the extent that they can practice it) a much more advanced idea of wealth than any modern day American. First, no one owned anything. Second, the job of everyone in the tribe is to make sure the everyone else in the tribe has enough (not a lot, but enough). And it turns out it doesn't take too much effort to make sure everyone has enough, which leaves much time for the enjoyment of life.

You might find it interesting to explore the possibiity that some of the people on this planet that modern society considers quite primitive might, in perspective, be much more advanced that the modern society thinks it needs to transform them. Just some ideas for thought.

But lets that some people play a dfferent game...called I win and you lose game. This is one of power and money. They define winning accumulaing the most power and the most money. This game is played by finding resouces you can exploit, finding other people you can take advantage of, and finding weaker players that you can take over. How easy do you think it is for the enrich everyone people play their game, when these people are playing theirs? The first game becomes almost impossible.

And let's say that one thing that can be done is to open people's eyes up about what is going on in the world. I really don't think that it is "the" solution, but its part of the game I'm playing right now. However, other people, who have their eyes totally or partially closed, are playing a different game called, "I'm right and you are wrong." And what impact does that have on just the communication aspect of the game?

Once again, none of this is the solution, but it is a little introduction to the game people on this planet play.

Posted by Van K Tharp at 02:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Let's say everyone in the world was playing a game, only they didn't know it. Now if most people decide that winning the game comes from helpng eveyone win, then what would happen is that everyone would win. I was amazed to learn that some American Indian had (and still do to the extent that they can practice it) a much more advanced idea of wealth than any modern day American. First, no one owned anything. Second, the job of everyone in the tribe is to make sure the everyone else in the tribe has enough (not a lot, but enough). And it turns out it doesn't take too much effort to make sure everyone has enough, which leaves much time for the enjoyment of life.

You might find it interesting to explore the possibiity that some of the people on this planet that modern society considers quite primitive might, in perspective, be much more advanced that the modern society thinks it needs to transform them. Just some ideas for thought.

But lets that some people play a dfferent game...called I win and you lose game. This is one of power and money. They define winning accumulaing the most power and the most money. This game is played by finding resouces you can exploit, finding other people you can take advantage of, and finding weaker players that you can take over. How easy do you think it is for the enrich everyone people play their game, when these people are playing theirs? The first game becomes almost impossible.

And let's say that one thing that can be done is to open people's eyes up about what is going on in the world. I really don't think that it is "the" solution, but its part of the game I'm playing right now. However, other people, who have their eyes totally or partially closed, are playing a different game called, "I'm right and you are wrong." And what impact does that have on just the communication aspect of the game?

Once again, none of this is the solution, but it is a little introduction to the game people on this planet play.

Posted by Van K Tharp at 02:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Someone posted the following comment on my last post

The same people who complain about the rothchields and the fed are the people who think bush created 911 so he could go to kill people. its all consipiracy theories. yeah bankers lobbied to get the fed created, whats the news here?history of governments are filled lobby and deals with money underneath the table. that doesnt mean that fed is trying to destroy the economy or that 'big corporations' wants to create a new holocaust with euthanasia facilities

I really grateful for that comment because it allowed me to realize that I do have a lot of conspiracy ideas in me but I also realized that my source was quite different from the source most people have. It comes from my modelling work.

And by the way, I agree with the person making the comment. Trillion dollar industries are interested in 1) preserving the status quo and 2) gaining power and money. What they do is not necessarily a deliberate intent to destroy anything. But if making things better meant getting rid of that industry, they are also not likely to do it. Futhermore, they are not likely to stop looking for ways to get more power and money at the expense of whatever, because they believe that power and money are important. However, the solution to a better world has nothing to do with fighting these large power and money sources.

I've been modeling trading success for some time. I first modeled the trading process and my peak performance course came out of that. My overall conclusion from that work was that MOST PEOPLE DO THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF WHAT IS REQUIRED FOR SUCCESS. That was the first ahah.

Next I looked at position sizing as an ongoing modeling project. That's culminated in the Definitive Guide to Position Sizing which will be published by this summer. My overall conclusion from that work was that most people have never heard of position sizing, including most professional traders. So here is this key variable that accounts for about 90% of performance variability and most people haven't heard about it, including most professionals. Portfolio managers cannot practice it because they have to be 90% invested at all times and bank traders can't practice it because they don't even know how much money they are trading. I also concluded that professionals are successful because they make their own rules for how the game is played and won. And when they get others to follow those rules, they win no matter what happens.

Some time during this process I also worked with about a have dozen or so very successful brokers who wanted to improve their trading. During the process of consulting with them I modeled what they were doing to produce success. And my conclusion was that it was the exact opposite of what brokerage companies spend a fortunate to train their brokers to do. I first thought I had a great business opportunity to train brokerage companies in what it took to be really successful and then I discovered that they were not interested. They had designed the rules so that they won... they got paid out of commissions and they even had rules adopted saying that it was a conflict of interest for them to be paid out of their clients profits. Hmm...so instead they win no matter what you do...even if you blow up. I also remembered that when I'd first lost $20,000 in the markets in about six months in 1974. At the end of that period, I took at look at what I'd spent in commissions and it was about $25,000. Hmm.

Dr. Scott Brown and I have recently looked at academic models of finance versus what is important for success. And we've both concluded that the Academic models are almost the antithesis of what it takes for success. We sort of concluded that perhaps Nobel prizes were given out for what might support the rules that Wall Street wants you to think is important for success. Hmm.

I've also modeled the process of developing a trading system that fits you. This is covered in our System Development Course and in Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom. My overall conclusion is that what is necessary for success is the exact opposite of what most people are taught or believe. Does this begin to sound like a common theme?

My next step was to take a look at wealth. What's important for success at wealth? Well, my conclusion from this was to decide that people had made up the idea that to win the wealth game you had to have all the money in the world. Being a millionaire didn't cut it any more and that's the top 1% of all Americans. Perhaps you had to be a billionaire to win.

And since some people can never win, a new rule was made up to give them hope. He or she who has the most toys wins or at least becomes happy (for a few minutes). And you can get the latest toy if the down payment is low enough and the monthly payments are low enough. Now this rule actually creates financial slavery in its worst form. I went to the Bahamas and started to teach school teachers these principles. What I discovered was that about 10 years earlier, credit cards had been introduced into the Bahamas. People went from being fine to suddenly having massive debt in a very short period of time. Doesn't this sound like a common theme? Most people do the exact opposite of what it takes for success. Only by now it’s pretty clear that it is because they are playing a game and someone else is making up all the rules. Hmm. And quite often there is a trillion dollar industry behind those rules. And they are quite likely to resist any change to those rules because it might affect their trillion dollar industry.

And of course, there is a different way of doing things, a different way of playing the money game. I've taught this as an infinite wealth course. But, of course, most people do he exact opposite of this and play a losing game.
When you model something you need to find the tasks that successful people have in common and the ingredients for each task. One of those ingredients is the beliefs involved. At the start of my modeling career I learned that beliefs are just are filters to reality. They have nothing to do with reality.

As a result, I've often said the following:

1) You cannot trade the markets. You can only trade your beliefs about the markets.

2) All beliefs are fiction, so just take a look at how useful your beliefs are.

And all of these statements were quite controversial when I first introduced them into this blog. However, by looking at my beliefs over the years and noticing what was useful and what wasn't, I've generally found that the more people accept a belief as being really true, the least useful it was. Hmm.

Now let's look at one more step...looking at what others have done with modeling. I became good friends with a man in Ireland who had developed an alternative health clinic. People who had been rejected by the system came to him as a last resort. And by rejected, I mean people came to him who were told 1) there is no cure or 2) you are going to die. My friend had achieved 90% success rates (assuming that people followed his program) with these failure cases. And if I could summarize this philosophy it was 1) that the body could heal itself if you just return the body to normal; 2) that his key job was to return the body to its normal state rather than treat symptoms; and 3) that most of our health problems was simply due to the food we eat.

Incidentally, my friend has pointed out that a Nobel Prize was awarded when it was shown that cancer cells occur when they cannot use oxygen any more and they start fermenting sugar instead. And another Nobel Prize was award by showing that this process can be reversed by giving the cells oxygen again. However, it's not labeled as the cause and cure for cancer. Instead we are spending billions on finding drugs to cure cancer.

I went on his program for over 9 months and discover that I had tremendous addictions to foods that were not good for me and that those addictions were as strong as the worst addictions you can imagine -- like to heroin. But in this case the addictions were to refined carbohydrates and to sugar. Hmm. By the way, watch the movie SUPER SIZE ME and you'll understand this process much better.

I also went to a health clinic in Switzerland and found that what they did produced immediate, tremendous health benefits. And I thought to myself, what if I could just get this sort of treatment once each year. I then learned of a doctor who was giving those treatments to patients in Maryland. He patients loved him but the medical profession didn't and it took away his license. Hmm

So here was another example from another field. Most people the exact opposite of what is require for success. Only in this example it became clear to me that in order to correct things you had to fight two different trillion dollar industries in the US. The first trillion dollar industry was the medical professional who believes that you must treat symptoms with very expensive drugs .. many of which are dangerous. And those who adopt other treatment methods tend to lose their license to practice medicine.

And the other trillion dollar industry was the processed food industry. What are the chances of getting them to produce healthier foods? I think the question is answered when you begin to learn that the industry that has best managed legal addictions, the tobacco industry, is now moving heavily into the processed food industry and buying out many of the largest companies.

So what's going on? Well, in every area in which I'm familiar, people do the exact opposite of what is required for success. And what seems to be behind that, in almost every instance, is a trillion dollar industry of some sort. And if people started doing what was necessary for success, the trillion dollar industry would suffer. And will they just say, "Okay, what we're doing isn't in the best interests of most people, so we'll stop." No, instead, they will do everything in their power, including spending lots of money and lobbying to Congress, to make sure that the system is not disrupted in any way.

So am I a conspiracy theorist? Probably I am for the reasons just outlined. But my solution is NOT to fight the trillion dollar industries. The solution is much different from that and it's much easier. But that's another story... and perhaps the topic for a book one day. However, I'll give you a brief insight into the solution in the next post.

Posted by Van K Tharp at 07:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

Now let's continue the idea of what businesses do by recommending some books.

First, Baron Rothschild once said, "Give me control over a nation's money supply and I care not who makes the laws." And, of course, that was said when the Rochschilds were one of the richest families in the world (and I believe their descendants still are). Anyway, who do you think controls the Federal Reserve? It's not publically owned. It's owned by the Richest Families in the world. Look up Federal Reserve ownership on the Internet. Or better yet, read the Creature from Jeckyll Island -- the story of the Federal Reserve.

Second, one of the scariest books I've ever read was called, World Without Cancerr by G. Edward Griffin (the same author as the last). You can skip the first part which is the story of vitamin by 17 and just read the history of the collusion between big pharmaceutical companies and big oil. It's pretty scary. And both books are very well documented so you and read all the source material as well.

And lastly, the book I just finished is called The Secrets of an Economic Hit Man. I've lived through some of the things he described, including being stationed in the Canal Zone when the was a mini-revolution. However, when you finish this book, what's going on in today's world will begin to make sense to you.

Incidentally, one of the people I talked about in the last blog was part of one of the companies discussed in Confessions. And I'm sure he'd agree with everything in that book.

Posted by Van K Tharp at 01:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I'd like to devote a few posts to what I call the game of business. Most people think that businesses 1) are devoted to making their stockholders happy, 2) want their employees to be rewarded with the growth of the company, 3) are loyal to the country/state in which they were formed, and 4) are ethical with humanity and the planet's best interest at heart. Well, if that's what you think, you are wrong in all four assumptions.

First, businesses are devoted to making the CEO, a few insiders, and the largest stockholders wealthier. They could are less about the average stockholder. Just take a look at options awared to corporate insiders during the last 10 years. Some companies actually give options to their employees, but most only give them to corporate insiders.

Over the years I've consulted with high ranking people from inside corporations and I've asked them what they generally do -- what their objectives are. And guess what that is? Most major corporations look for which of their competitors they can drive out of business. In other words can they form some sort of alliance with other corporations, which would allow them to force another company out of the competition. And there is also another level ... how can corporations control governments?

Let me ask a question....do you think the U.S. government controls the corporations that operate under its laws or do you think corporations control the U.S. government by controlling the politicians.?

Posted by Van K Tharp at 09:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

When you adopt the belief that a trading system can be described by the R-mulitple distribution that it generates, it provides some incredible advanatages. One of them, I believe, is the ability to classify and rank systems. Those of you who have looked at the 2nd edition of Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom may have noticed that I started to do this with newsletters. We'd like to continue that, but we need R-multiple distrubtions on a lot more newsletters. Perhaps we can get those with your help.

But also I'm looking to be able to rank systems by the R-multiple distribuiton. Here's where I need your help. If you'd like to participate (and share in the results as they come out), then send me a brief description of your system with some basic descriptive material plus your R-multiple distribution. In addition. I need the dates of the trading and what you were trading.

Typical descriptiopns might include:

* Trend following after a retracement.
* Swing trading after a failed test.
* Band trading with a trend folloiwng filter.

It will probably take a couple of years, but what I suspect is that we'll be able to rank and classify systems amazingly well with this data.

For example, I alrady know with newsletters that value oriented newsletters will probably be the most successful (due to some of the limitaitons of newsletters).

And I've seen some amazing results with systems. If you'd like to participate, send me info about your system at info@iitm.com (Describe it generally, tell me what you trade, how many trades you have R-multiples for, and the datas of your trading). I'll let you know if its useful or if we'll need more/different data.

Thanks,

Van

Posted by Van K Tharp at 06:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been working on the software review chapter of the Definitive Guide to Position Sizing for about two weeks now. I started the chapter with the idea that if you wanted position sizing software, you really had two choices. The first choice was to learn to program yourself In Excel and do everything in Excel. And that's still an option.

The second choice was to find someone to help you custom develop software for your trading business. The latter choice amounts to a several hundred thousand dollar commitment with no guarantee that you'd have anything but a software mess at the end.

However, after looking over reviews of a number of packages, looking at the web sites, and in a few cases, actually looking at the software myself. I think there is hope out there. I was actually suprised at the number of packages that have been developed by people after reading Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom.

There are some fairly good simulators out there -- Market system analyzer and Trade Sim both come to mind.

There is software with bulit in systems plus position sizing that requires little programming. MT Predictor and OmniTrader both come to mind.

There is some software that allows you to play with some pretty good systems, optimize, and do both simulations and position sizing with very little programming requirements. Here the software of choice seems to be Trading Blox (Turtle or Pro editions.)

There are two packages at the $3000 level that allow you to develop much of what you need if you are willing to program.. These including Trading Blox Builder and Mechanica Standard. Trading Blox has the advantages desribed above, but if you need to get into programming, it looks like a steep learning curve. Mechanic Standard is the NEW windows edition of Trading Recipes, but with many improvements. Trading Recipes was very easy to program and my understanding is that Mechanica Standard will be equally easy and it includes a number of built in sysems.

And there are even high end packages designed for trading businesses -- Mechanica Pro and PowerST. These are both probably a better than spending a lot of money for custom software and both are being used now. Mechanica Pro has been in Beta Testing for four years and is currently involved in managing billions of dollars.

Anyway, my overall conclusions is that position sizing software has evolved a lot. I now believe that most of you can find some software package out there that is right for you and that does position sizing.

I'll have a lot more information for you when the Definitive Guide to Position Sizing comes out. When? I'm somewhat of a perfectionist, so my guess is 4 months after I finish it, but certainly some time in 2007.

Posted by Van K Tharp at 06:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I just watched a show in which scientists discussed things that could end or drastically change life of earth, listed in order from least likely to occur soon to most likely. These disasters were as follows:

1) A star explodes. Apparently, astronomers can see this happening someplace in the universe almost daily. However, the shock was that if one occurred in our Gallaxy (remember there are billions of Gallaxies), then the Earth would probably be destroyed fairly quickly.

2) A black hole approaches...when a star collapses it forms a black hole, sucking in everything around it. Scientists used to think these were stationary, but they are not. They move quite rapidly through space. And if one approaches Earth, we can all say goodbye. Fortunately, none of the known ones are approaching.

3) Super Intelligent Machines. You've seen stories about how Robots or Machines take over (e.g. the Terminator series comes to mind). Well, scientists now believe it is inevitable that machines we create will one day (next 100 years) be more intelligent than us. And when they reach that status, they could easily decide to wipe us out.

4) Super Volcano -- There is one in Yosemite. It blows about once every 600,000 years and when it does so it wipes everything out. That hasn't happend for 630,000 years, so its now due. Very few human beings on the planet would survive this.

5) Astroid -- They have discovered one that on April 13, 2029 will come so close to the earth that it will be inside the orbit of our communication satellites. Fortunately, it will miss the earth. However, there is a 0.1% chance that the earth's gravity will have enough influence on the astroid to change it's orbit slightly, meaning it would crash into the earth on April 13, 2036. And if it does it will cause mass extinctions.

6) Atomic disaster is the next most probable....and you all know about this one.

7) The next most likely is a Pandemic...10 of these have occurred in the past 300 years and they wipe out a lot of people. Let's see that works out to one every 30 years and we're way overdue. Pandemic flu is supposed to be the next one. However, the scientists think that one we make through our technology could be the real next disaster and dwarf anything made by nature.

8) The last one discussed is already happening -- global warming. We might be able to soften its impact by taking immediate action, but we cannot prevent it. In fact, CO2 levels are now higher than they have been in the last 600,000 years and there is a direct correlation between CO2 levels and the amount of global warming. In other words, CO2 levels are now higher than anything we can measure in the past (and some bad things have happened in the last 600,000 years climate wise). The best we can do is stop CO2 levels from rising more, but we cannot reduce the current level. But does our government (much less the world) do anything with an eye for future generations? Very little because they only care about what will impact the next election. Al Gore might have been an exception.

So what will happen with global warming? One sure thing that will happen (probably within the next 100 years) is that the ocean levels will rise 40 feet. That could easily put most of the world's major cities underwater -- Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Norfolk, Charleston, Miami, Tampa, New Orleans, San Diego, San Francisco, LA, Portland, Seattle, etc. (even Chicago because of Lake Michigan) -- just to name some major cities in the US. And those are just some of the lessor predictions of global warming. "The Day After Tomorrow" gives an example of "feedback loops" that might be triggered through global warming, but hopefully that's just someone's wild imagination.

Now I mention these disasters, not to scare you, because these events would all wipe out mankind (or nearly so). And they all will happen someday and there is nothing we can do. Just as it's pretty certain you'll die one day and there is nothing we can do. And one of them is happening right now, although the major impact of it might not be felt in our lifetimes -- just our children's lives. We cannot stop it although we may be able to ameliorate it. Yet most people don't even think about these things. And if there is nothing you can do, why worry? You are probably safe for at least the next 10-20 years. Thus, our government will probably implode from debt prior to a major impact from global warming. However, I would not want to be in the "insurance business" over the next 50 years. That means, for example, Warren Buffett, but he won't be around 50 years from now either.

So what's the Point of All of This?

Price shocks in the market place, where prices over a wide variety of stocks, futures, forex, etc move 10% or more within a day or so are much more likely than anything discussed above. These could wipe out many people financialy. Yet most people trade like these have no chance to occur at all. There have been two major ones since I've been a trading coach -- September 11, 2001 and Black Monday (October 1987). That amounts to a 13 year average between price shocks. By the way, if anyone has a list of major price shocks over the last 200 years, I'd be interested. These have to be one's that have had a major influence on the markets -- like a 10% change in the market within a few days or overnight.

So what's the next one and how will it affect you? I have no idea. They are not that predictable except to say they will occur. What you really need to do is make sure that when the next one occurs that it doesn't wipe you out, especially if you play a highly leveraged trading game. This means watching your portfolio heat and doing some worse case disaster planning. Consider the following:

Carefully, consider the impact of price shocks in your position sizing.

Develop a business plan and do a worst case contingency plan as part of it. We have material at our web site to help you here, such as the business planning CDs.

Posted by Van K Tharp at 04:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I want to start making some comments about my trip DOWN UNDER. I wish I could have made them while I was there. But I just didn't have convenient Internet Access. And I don't consider a hotel that charges 55 cents per minute for internet access to be convenient.

That said, let me talk about New Zealand first. Kala (my wife) and I both agreed that we'd probably love to live in New Zealand. It's absolutely gorgeous and I only got to visit the Northern part in the six days I was there. First, it's a fairly large country (about the size of the UK) but it only has six million inhabitants. There are two results of that. First, the top soil is probably quite rich and still full on minerals...perhaps equivalent to the U.S. about 150-200 years ago. Today we only have a few inches of good top soil and its been depleted of most of the great minerals.

The second thing that I also noticed about New Zealand is the animals. Unlike the U.S. where most of the animals raised for meat consumption are basically kept where they can hardly move so they can get big and fat quickly. What they are fed is not necessarily healthy (like growth hormones) and it certainly isn't rich in nutrition. However, in New Zealand the animals are running free over the countryside eating the rich natural plants (i.e., grass) that grows in their rich soil. I even saw fields filled with turkeys.

Now how does that show up in an obvious way? It shows up in the food. It's wonderful. The best Mexican food I've ever eaten was in Auckland. The best Thai food I've ever eaten was in Auckland. Why? I'm sure its because they use New Zealand meat and agricultural products.

However, there is a sad contrast. The U.S has managed to export lots of fast food restaurants there. McDonalds, Burger King, and KFC are appearing all over the place. I went into a McDonalds to check on the price of a Big Mac, just to see how it checks out in terms of price (see below). And McDonald's was the only place where I saw locals who looked really fat and I thought that was quite sad.

Okay, the New Zealand dollar was worth about 64c or so when I was there. However, a big Mac meal could easily run $15 New Zealand dollars. Thus, its not very favorable compared with the U.S. And housing is definitely not cheap. Most housing was in the million dollar range (New Zealand dollars, of course). But the average New Zealand house is very, very small compared with the average U.S. house. Thus, housing in New Zealand is also very expensive.

Next up.... a few more thoughts on New Zealand.

Posted by Van K Tharp at 08:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been in Northern New Zealand for about four days now, having a wonderful time. It reminds me a lot of Hawaii except that its a lot colder. Kala and I have been in the most northern part visiting the Bay of Islands and seeing much of the history. We took a trip to the very tip (Cape Reinga) which included a bus trip along a deserted beach. I was amazed at the number of cars that venture onto the beach and then get stuck (destroyed by the ocean) and they are not insure on the beach. And there's no way off. The exit is through a stream and you'd never figure that out by yourself (plus you'd think it would damage your car to travel in the stream and it will).

Also did my first experience sliding down a large sand dune. I did it and my wife refused. But the hard part wasn't going down, it was climbing the sand dune. 10 steps felt like I just climbed a mountain.

Not much to comment on market wise but down under is a lot better place for Americans to visit. You still get a reasonable rate for the dollar.

Posted by Van K Tharp at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)