izing market data, which I recommend you learn, other than todistinguish between what they call a "value area" and what I call a "balancearea." Steidlmayer and Koy say that most of the trading volume takes placewithin a specific price range because that range is what the market hasestablished as a fair price representing the value of whatever is being traded.
The distinction I want to make is that the majority of traders don'tspecifically relate to a fair price or value; they relate to comfort. What givesthem comfort is doing what everyone else is doing. In a balance area, tradersare basically absorbing each other's orders or energy (their beliefs about thefuture expressed in the form of energy). When I say that traders relate tocomfort, I mean some degree less of the fear they normally feel. Most ofthe trades take place in a value or balance area because it is where most ofthe traders feel the least fear, somewhere in the middle of the tradingrange between an established high or low. This is precisely why there arefewer trades outside the value or balance area and why, as Steidlmayer andKoy say, these trades represent the best opportunities to make money, "tobuy or sell away from value." And that is why these are the scariest tradesto make because the trader who can make them is all alone; there is nosafety in numbers.
There are traders who relate to value by making comparisons betweenvarious interrelated contracts and the cash markets. There are theprofessional commercial or institutional arbitrage traders who will put onor take off positions based on sophisticated mathematical formulas thatdetermine the present value of something as it relates to something else.Otherwise, the majority of traders don't have the slightest concept ofvalue. The more time the market spends at a certain price or in a pricerange, the more balance, agreement, or comfort there is in the market.Traders are absorbing each other's orders, and nobody is willing to bid theprice higher or offer the price lower.
Eventually someone will enter the market who doesn't agree witheveryone else and believes there is a possibility for the prices to movemuch higher or lower. This person or group of traders will basically upsetthe balance with their buying or selling activity. If their activity is forcefulenough, it will set off a series of chain reactions as it causes other traders,who are either holding positions or watching the market for opportunities,to confront these new conditions.
If the balance is tipped in favor of the buyers, for example, it may attract
158new buyers into the market, creating more buying force and, hence, moredisequilibrium. This may cause the traders who are holding short positionsto liquidate. To do that they will need to be buyers, leaving fewer and fewersellers willing to take the other side of the trades the buyers want to get intoand the old sellers want to get out of. These traders will compete among oneanother for the dwindling supply of sellers, bidding the price higher andhigher to make it more attractive for someone to sell.
While these traders are in their own little bidding war, they usually losesight of the fact that the rest of the world is watching what is going on.There could be a trader who is looking to put on a massive hedge to protectthe value of an investment portfolio or crop. He is observing this priceaction from a completely different perspective than the traders on the floor.The floor traders are just concerned with getting their share and notmissing out on the opportunity these rapidly rising or falling pricesrepresent. The hedger, on the other hand, is looking at the price rise as anunexpected gift. The rally could have provided much higher prices than heanticipated for locking in the value of something he already owns.
So the commercial trader decides to put on a hedge. And you can assumeif one commercial thinks the price is good, others will too. Anyway, if thehedger has an order he perceives to be big enough to stop the rally, he willgive instructions to the floor brokers handling his order to do scale inselling, the purpose being to get as much of the order sold as possiblewithout ruining the rally.
However, it won't take long for the other floor traders to figure out whatis going on. They are very aware of which floor brokers fill orders for bigcommercial and institutional customers. Once they find out someone "big"is in the market selling into the rally, few if any of the floor traders will goagainst them by continuing to buy. No one wants to get caught at the top.So as each group of traders finds out who is selling, they will all try toreverse their positions by selling, and the cycle starts all over again.
Watching this happen from the outside of the pit, it would seem that thereversal is instantaneous, but it isn't. It occurs in waves, as the informationabout who is selling spreads from the source outward, very much like thewaves that result from throwing a stone in a pond.
This leads me to the observation that few traders have any concept ofvalue. They know that price movement creates an opportunity to makemoney, and it can just as easily take the money away if they don't knowwhat they are doing. If the price trades within a certain range for a period oftime, traders will become comfortable with that balance area, making it easierfor the trader to trade. As prices move out of the balance area, fewer traders willparticipate because of what they perceive as more risk than they are comfortablewith.
Highs and Lows
Probably the most prominent of these significant reference points are previous159highs and lows. If prices are moving steadily higher, buyers will begin toanticipate whether or not prices can penetrate the last high, and sellers will belooking for another top.
In the mind of the seller, that last top, or other tops in the distant past, was aplace where the market met enough resistance to stop the rally. In other words,enough traders thought the price was expensive the last time it was there, andthey will begin to anticipate whether the same will happen again.
Both buyers and sellers will have raised expectations about the likelihood ofthe market doing one of two possible things—making new highs or failing tomake new highs. As the market approaches this high, if some of them are willingto bid the price past it to some significant level, it could make believers out ofother traders who were on the sidelines. If these new traders come into themarket as buyers, it will add to the upward momentum, possibly causing oldsellers to bail out of their positions. This will also add to the upward momentumof price movement.
Support and Resistance
In a falling market, support is a price level where buyers entered the market orold sellers liquidated their shorts with enough force to keep prices from goingany lower. In a rising market, resistance is a price level where sellers entered themarket or old buyers liquidated their longs with enough force to keep pricesfrom going any higher.
Support and resistance levels are significant reference points because manytraders recognize support and resistance on charts and believe in theirsignificance.
That statement may seem redundant to some people, but it really illustrates avery important point about the nature of the markets (traders acting on theirbelief in future value). All beliefs eventually become self-fulfilling prophecies.If enough traders believe in the significance of support and resistance, anddemonstrate their belief by making trades at those levels, they are in effectfulfilling their own beliefs about the future.
As observers, if we know that each side (in the perpetual tug of warbetween buyers and sellers) expects one thing to happen, then we willknow who will be the winner, who will be the loser, what they will likelydo in each case, and how it will affect the balance between the two forces.
For example, if buyers are bidding up a market, causing prices to rise, andall of a sudden many traders are willing to sell for less than the last price (orone trader comes into the market with a big order to sell), causing animmediate price reversal, the price level at which the market stopped isresistance.
Now, it really doesn't matter why the balance of forces shifted frombuyers to sellers. Everybody will have his own reasons for what causedprices to reverse. All of them will usually be way beyond the simplest andmost obvious reason—that enough traders were displaying a strong enoughconviction in their belief in future value to stop the upward price
160momentum and create downward price momentum.
What is really important about this, however, is that many traders willremember the market reversed at that price level. As a result, that price willthen have a degree of significance in the minds of those traders whoexperienced the reversal.
This first reversal is a top. What we don't know is whether it will remaina top, how long it will take before it is challenged again, or whether it willever be challenged again.
If the buyers are dominant enough to bid the market back up to theprevious high, they will consider this second attempt a test and begin toanticipate whether or not prices can exceed the previous high. The onlyway that can happen is if these higher prices actually attract additionaltraders into the market on the buy side because they believe it is anopportunity to buy low relative to the future. Floor traders are especiallyaware of whether or not new traders are being attracted into the marketfrom off the floor and act on this information.
For the sake of this example, if the market reversed very strongly the lasttime prices approached this level, there will be many traders who will thinkit will probably reverse again. As a result, they may act on their belief aboutthe low probability of prices trading beyond the last high and therebyprevent it from happening. If more traders are willing to act on the beliefthat it won't in relation to those who act on the belief that it will, then priceswill stop again.
Technically, once the market tests a previous high or low and fails topenetrate, you then have a defined support and resistance area. Support andresistance are most easily identified in point-and-figure charts because theygraphically represent price movement in reversals. Once support andresistance are established and identified, it can be very easy to trade byputting your orders on either side of the support or resistance line.
For example, if over the last two weeks, every time the bonds rallied to95-25, then fell back significantly to some support level, like 94-10, what Ihave just described is a support and resistance zone, commonly referred toas a trading range. The significance of either end of the zone would bedetermined by how many times prices rallied to 95-25 and failed topenetrate, and how many times prices fell to 94-10 and failed topenetrate. Obviously, the more attempts and failures, the more weightthese points will have in the minds of the traders who experience thesetests and subsequent failures.
For an objective observer with no bias toward any particular direction,trading ranges can be very easy ways to make money. As the marketapproaches 95-25, put in an order to sell somewhere around 95-21. Sincewe know the markets are not precise, you don't want to put your orderexactly at the upper end of the range, because each time the market makesan attempt to penetrate there will be many traders who will be anticipatinga failure. As a result, they will start selling early and the price may never
161get to 95-25 for you to get filled, if you had placed your order there.
Also, put an order in the market to stop and reverse (buy two) possiblyaround 95-31. Each circumstance will be different. In this example, the 6ticks that I have given the market to define itself may not be enough. Theobject would be to put your orders in a place where the highest probabilityis that it will continue in the direction of your trade. If the market trades to95-31, it still may not be enough for old sellers to become disappointedand bail out of their positions en masse, causing prices to rise even further.
This trade will work if the resistance level has a high degree ofsignificance in the minds of enough traders for them to act and sell againstit in relation to those who are willing buy. Each time the marketapproaches this area, traders will expect either one of two possible thingsto happen. The market will penetrate, or it will fail again. In any case theprice move that results will be significant because one side of the marketwill be disappointed. And if we know what will validate and disappoint eachgroup, then we can determine how they will likely behave and thereby affectthe balance of the market.
Since the market can display billions of combinations of behaviors fromone point to the next, significant reference points like support andresistance narrow those behaviors down to two likely possibilities. Byputting your order on both sides, you can take advantage of the situation,regardless of what happens.
Support Becomes Resistance andResistance Becomes Support
Many traders have read or heard that old support becomes resistance andold resistance becomes support. This bit of market insight is valid for somevery sound psychological reasons.
If resistance has been established at 95-25, it is because there were enoughtraders who sold at that price to make it resistance. In fact, it would probablybe the same group of traders who sold at 95-25 each time the marketapproached that price. So, every time the market rallied up to 95-25 andsold off, it made winners out of all those traders who chose to sell at or nearthat price. As a result, 95-25 will take on a great deal of significance in theminds of the traders who were successful. Each subsequent time they aresuccessful will only strengthen their belief and faith in that price level.
Now, the prices rally up to 95-25 again, maybe for the fourth or fifthtime, and like the last time, you will have a group of traders who believe inthat resistance level and will sell against it. Only this time the buyers arevery strong on the way up and continue to buy right on through theresistance level.
All the traders who choose to sell at 95-25 are now faced with having todeal with a losing trade. Some will get out with a small loss, others will hangon hoping the market will come back. In any case, the market invalidated
162their beliefs about the future, and they are suffering considerably. They hadfaith in 95-25, and in their minds the market betrayed them.
If the market happens to come back to 95-25 after rallying for severaldays, how do you think the group of traders who sold at 95-25 the last time—the ones who believe they were betrayed—are going to behave? First, thetraders who were hanging on in hopes of the market coming back will bailout as soon as they are close to being made whole. They are so grateful forgetting their money back, there is no way they will stay in that traderegardless of what the possibilities are for additional profits. They will haveto be buyers to liquidate their shorts and will be all too happy to end theirsuffering.
The traders who originally cut their losses when the market blew through95-25 won't consider selling at that price again because of the emotionalpain of being wrong the last time they sold at that price. I am not sayingthey will in turn be buyers at that level, but they are very likely not to sell.The overall effect this will have on the balance of the market is to takeaway from the existing pool of available sellers at 95-25 (old resistance),thereby causing the balance to be tipped in favor of the buyers. Hence, oldresistance becomes support, and old support becomes resistance for thesame reasons.
Trends and Trendlines
Trends, a series of higher highs and higher lows, or lower highs and lowerlows over a period of time, work because there aren't enough sellers toabsorb the number of buyers competing with each other to get into themarket during that period of time. Adding to this buying force will be oldsellers at lower levels who finally lose faith and bail out of their positions.They will do this in significant numbers when the prices penetrate whatthey believe to be significant reference points.
Keep in mind that trends are a function of time. The next tick up couldbe defined as a one-tick trend. How long will the imbalance between buyersand sellers last?
In an upward-trending market, prices will retrace because buyers aretaking profits. This will create some counteracting pressure, but if the trendcontinues after a normal retracement, it just tells you there still aren'tenough sellers around to absorb all the buyers, with enough left over tocreate downward momentum. You will know when that has happenedwhen the trending market breaks its normal ebb and flow pattern. That iswhy markets that break trendlines have a tendency to keep on going in thedirection of the break, because it signals a significant shift in the balance offorces.
After a certain period of time, you can notice how trending markets willdevelop a certain rhythm and flow, making the price movement look verysymmetrical on a bar chart. You really don't have to know why this is so,
163you just have to notice that it exists. When this flow is broken (the markettrading above or below a significant trend line), it is a good indication thebalance of the market forces has shifted. Then ask yourself, what is thelikelihood the shift will gain hold and continue trending in the direction ofthe break?
You don't even have to know the answer to that question. Put in an orderat a spot that would confirm the highest probability of a change in thebalance. Then wait for the market to define itself. If your order is filled,put a stop where the market shouldn't be to confirm that your trade is stillvalid. "What is a valid trade?" you ask. One where the highest probabilitiesfor price movement are in the direction of the prevailing force.
High > Retrace > Rally to a Lower High
I will give you an example. No matter how simple a trade this is, it has verysound psychological reasons for working. In this example, the market madenew highs and sold off. The sell-off could be the result of new sellerscorning into the market in force, or old buyers selling to take their profits,or a combination of both. Prices will continue to drop until enough tradersbelieve the price is cheap and are willing to take the initiative and bid theprice back up. As the price approaches the last previous high, buyers willbegin to anticipate whether or not prices can penetrate, and sellers will belooking for another top.
In either case expectations by both will be raised. If some buyers are willingto bid the price past the previous highs to some significant level, it will makebelievers out of others who were on the sidelines. If they do come in, it willadd to the momentum.
Some old sellers will admit to being wrong and will have to buy to get outof their trades, thus adding to the upward momentum.
However, what if the market approaches the highs the second time, andsellers come back into the market again with enough force to keep the pricefrom exceeding or equaling the previous high? Buyers will start to becomedisappointed. Where will they really be disappointed?—if enough buyersdon't come into the market to support the price at the previous low. If pricespenetrate that low, watch for buyers to bail out en masse. For them to get outof their position, who is going to buy it from them? If everybody is trying tosell and no one is available to buy, what are prices going to do? Fall like arock.
The reason why a bull market is ready to turn into a bear market when thegeneral public gets involved is because the general public has the leasttolerance for risk and consequently needs the most reassurance andconfirmation that what they are doing is a sure thing. As a result, they willbe the last to be convinced that the rising market represents an opportunity.If a bull market has lasted for any length of time, the general public will feelcompelled to jump on the bandwagon so to speak, because of their
164perception that everyone else is doing it and making money. They will pickup on any reason that sounds the most rational to justify their participation,when in reality, they will know very little about what they are doing, butsince everyone else is doing it, how can they go wrong.
A continuing bull market requires the continual infusion of new traderswho are willing to pay higher and higher prices. The longer a bull marketlasts, the greater the number of people who are already participating asbuyers, leaving fewer and fewer traders who haven't already bought andfewer and fewer traders who are willing to bid the price up. These olderbuyers obviously want to see the market keep on going up, but they alsodon't want to get caught holding the bag, if the market stops going up. Astheir profits accumulate from the higher prices, they start to get nervousabout taking their profits.
By the time the general public starts buying en masse, the professionaltraders knows the end is near. How does the professional know this?Because the professional knows that there is a practical limit to the numberof people who will participate to bid the price up. There will come a pointwhere everyone who is likely to be a buyer will have already bought, quiteliterally leaving no one else to buy. The professional trader would like themarket to continue to go up indefinitely just like all the other buyers.However, he also understands the impracticality of that happening, so hestarts taking his profits while there are still some buyers available to sell to.When the last buyer has bought, the market has no place to go but down.
The public gets stuck because they weren't willing to take the risk whenthere was still potential for the market to move. For the market to sustainitself, it needs to attract more and more people. As big as this country is orthe world for that matter, there are only so many people who will buy.Eventually the supply of buyers runs out, and when it does the market fallslike a rock.
The professionals have been selling out their positions before thishappens, but once the supply of buyers runs out, the professionals start tocompete among one another for the available supply of buyers which isdwindling fast, so they offer lower and lower prices to attract someone intothe market so they can get out. At some point, instead of the lower pricesbeing attractive to people, it panics them. The public didn't anticipatelosing. Their expectations are very high with very little toleration fordisappointment. The only reason they got in was because it was a surething. When the public starts to sell, it starts a stampede.
Again, people will ascribe their actions to some rational reason becausenobody wants to be thought of as irrational and panic-stricken. The realreason why people panicked and the prices fell is simply because pricesdidn't keep on going up.
165CHAPTER 16
The Steps to Success
Self-discipline is simply a mental technique to stay focused on what youneed to learn, or do, to accomplish your goals. There will be times whenyou won't have the resources to function effectively relative to the externalconditions. Other times the resources you do have will be in conflict withboth the conditions and your goals. So to accomplish your goals, you willneed to adapt. In other words, you will need to change the way you interactwith the environment. To change your behavior and how you experiencethe environment (feelings and emotions), you will have to change yourperspective. To change your perspective, you will have to change the mentalcomponents that effect your perception of environmental information.Keep in mind that you can't physically control what the markets do; you canonly learn to control your perception of the markets to share the highestdegree of reality (the least amount of distortion) with everyone else who isparticipating or has the potential to participate. The more sophisticated youbecome as a trader, the more you will realize that trading is completelymental. It isn't you against the markets, it's just you. All the other tradersparticipating to make the market provide you with an opportunity to makemoney from their divergent beliefs about the future. If people didn'tdisagree about the future value of any particular commodity or stock, thenthere would be nothing to compel them to either bid a price higher or offerit lower, and the opportunity to profit from these changes would cease toexist. So the markets just offer the individual trader opportunity. They don'tchoose the data on which you focus your attention, and they certainly don't
166interpret the data you perceive. Nor are the markets responsible for whatyou can't perceive because of the distinctions you haven't learned to makeyet. They also don't choose when you put on a trade, how long you stay in,when you get out, or how many contracts you buy or sell.
Each individual trader creates his own experience of the markets basedon this picking and choosing process and the decisions that result. If youaccept this concept as valid, then the implications are that you will neverhave a valid reason to blame the markets for your unsatisfying results. Themarkets don't owe you anything (regardless of how hard you work to besuccessful) because every other trader participating is doing so to take yourmoney away. You and you alone are completely responsible for whateveryou end up with. The sooner you accept that responsibility (if you haven'talready), the easier it will be to identify what skills you need to learn tointeract with the markets more successfully. Even if you can't identify themental components responsible for what you ended up with, at least byassuming that you are responsible, you will be opening yourself up to findout.
To be a successful trader you need to trade without fear. As you havealready learned when you use fear as a resource to limit yourself, you willcreate the very conditions you are trying to avoid. Or to say this anotherway, you will experience your fears. You also can't learn anything newbecause fear will force you to perceive the environmental "now" from yourindividual past. You will experience that past regardless of theopportunities the environment may have to offer in that same moment.Your individual history will repeat itself until you change your history,which will then allow you to learn and experience something new. Evolvingbeyond your fears is also the best way to learn how to predict marketbehavior. The more fearful traders are, the fewer the choices they perceive asavailable to themselves and the easier it is to predict their behavior. You willbe able to recognize this clearly in others when you recognize it yourself andwork your way out of the condition where you trade with fear.
However, you will need some resource to limit yourself so that you don'tget reckless. Getting reckless is exactly what people have a tendency to do ifthey don't feel any fear, especially if there is a potential for thrilling results,as there is in trading. The resource you need to limit yourself is self-trust.You will gain that self-trust when you establish a set of rules and guidelinesto trade by and know that you will always follow those rules withouthesitation, regardless of the temptations to do otherwise.
Once you trust yourself to always do what needs to be done, there will benothing to fear because the markets won't be able to do anything to you, asa result of your inability to respond appropriately. Consequently, withnothing to fear, you are then free to observe the markets free ofdistortions. There won't be any need to avoid certain categories ofinformation because of how that information will make you feel. The lessreason you have to avoid or distort information, the more you make yourself
167available to learn about the nature of the markets. The more you learn, theeasier it will be to anticipate what the market will do next. If you canaccurately anticipate what will happen next, the easier it will be to giveyourself more and more money (notwithstanding any mental componentsthat would argue against giving yourself more money).
It is very important for you to understand that these new insights aboutthe market's behavior will come in stages as you learn to trust yourself moreand more. There is no "get rich quick" scheme being offered here. There areenough rags to riches to rags stories to attest to the fact that get rich quickdoesn't work anyway. Getting rich quick can only lead to a great deal ofanxiety and frustration if you don't have the skills to keep it. There isn'tmuch point to making a lot of money if you are a susceptible to making thatone trading error that can give it all back plus more. Once you have made afortune and lost it, the psychological work that you will need to do to get itback is enormous compared to work that is necessary to keep yourself fromlosing it in the first place. As a trader it is more important to know that youwill always follow your rules than it is to make money, because whatevermoney you make, you will inevitably lose back to the market if you can't followyour rules.
You also need to understand that your rules will change as yourunderstanding and insights evolve. Many people don't like to establishtrading rules because they believe that once made, they can't be changed.Any exercise that I offer you or rule that you select to guide your tradingbehavior is only transitory. They are methods and techniques to get youbeyond certain fundamental stages of development so that you can recognizefor yourself their value and what you need to do next to be more successful.In fact, a good rule of thumb to use to determine your readiness to movebeyond a certain rule or exercise and to the next challenge is the recognitionthat you can do what you set out to learn so well that it becomes secondnature. Otherwise, keep working at it until you don't have to think about itany longer.
STEP ONE: STAYING FOCUSED ONWHAT YOU NEED TO LEARN
First and foremost, you may need to change your perspective or the focus ofyour trading. Until now your focus may have been to make money. If this isso, you will need to change your perspective to "What do I need to learnor how will I have to adapt myself to interact more successfully?" Youneed to stay focused on mastering the steps to achieving your goal and notthe end result, knowing that the end result, money, will be a by-product ofwhat you know and how well you can act on what you know.
There is a tremendous difference between focusing on money andfocusing on using your trading as an exercise to identify what you need tolearn. The first will cause you to focus on what the markets are giving you
168or are taking away from you. The second perspective causes you to focusyour attention on your ability to to give yourself money. With the firstperspective, you are placing some of the responsibility onto the markets todo something for you. With the second perspective, you assume all theresponsibility.
Always keep in mind that each moment is a perfect reflection of yourlevel of development. If you look at each moment that things don't turn outas you want or expect as a mistake, then you will usually cut yourself offfrom the insight about yourself contained within each moment. The reasonwhy we will cut ourselves off from this information is because we typicallyassociate mistakes with pain. We will instinctively avoid pain and in doingso also avoid what we need to know about ourselves to interact moreeffectively in similar circumstances in the future.
To evolve beyond pain and our fear of mistakes, our mistakes have to beresolved. This could be a big task and you may not want to tackle it at thistime. So what you will need to do is build a corollary framework to place allof your trading experiences. This framework needs to be defined in such away that all experiences are valid and have meaning, and, as such,mistakes don't exist—they just point the way.
As part of this framework you may also need to change your definitionof a missed opportunity. Except for the inability to accept a loss, there isn'tanything that has the potential to cause more psychological damage than abelief in missed opportunities. Missed opportunities are trades that wouldhave always turned out perfectly because they only occurred in our minds,where we can make anything be as we want it to be. Of course, we wouldhave responded exactly as the conditions warranted without flaw. Theproblem is we didn't do it, and the resulting sense of loss we feel is difficultto reconcile. Therefore, these missed opportunity trades have the potentialto cause more anxiety and stress than the trades we actually do take thatturn out to be losers.
Nothing's worse than missing a "perfect" opportunity. However, if youcould have, you would have; it's that simple. The sooner you accept this, thesooner you will be able to take advantage of these missed opportunitiesinstead of beating yourself up over them. Besides there really isn't anythingto miss because the markets are in perpetual motion and will continue to beuntil everyone agrees on value. As long as the price keeps changing, therewill always be another opportunity.
When you start trading from the perspective that mistakes don't exist,you will be amazed at the sense of freedom you will feel to grow byaccepting your results as a reflection of who you are in that moment, whichthen allows you to determine what you need to learn to do better. Whenyou release the energy out of the belief that it is possible to miss anything,you will no longer feel compelled to do something, like getting into tradestoo early or too late. In other words, you will be giving yourselfadditional choices (not doing something is often the most appropriate
169choice) where only one choice existed.
You need to constantly keep in mind that the professional traders fromwhom you are trying to extract money already know and are using manyof the principles put forth in this book. They understand the concept ofobjectivity, have learned how to trade without fear, and know how toexecute their trades properly. Before you can begin to take money out of themarkets consistently instead of the markets taking yours, you will also haveto learn these skills.
So, I would suggest that you set aside a certain amount of trading capitalas tuition for your education. How much you set aside will be a function ofhow many skills you need to learn. What is