“It’s not always easy to do what’s not popular, but that’s where you make your money. Buy stocks that look bad to less careful investors and hang on until their real value is recognized”
– John Neff
“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it earns it. He who doesn’t pay it.”
– Albert Einstein
“I have two basic rules about winning in trading as well as in life: a) If you don’t bet, you can’t win. b) If you lose all your chips, you can’t bet”
– Larry Hite
“The trend is your friend until the end when it bends”
– Ed Seykota
“Today, people who hold cash equivalents feel comfortable. They shouldn’t. They have opted for a terrible long-term asset, one that pays virtually nothing and is certain to depreciate in value”
– Warren Buffet
“The goal of a successful trader is to make the best trades. Money is secondary”
– Alexander Elder
“Amateurs think about how much money they can make. Professionals think about how much money they could lose”
– Jack Schwager
“You create your own game in your mind based on your beliefs, intents, perception and rules”
– Mark Douglas
“There is a time to go long, a time to go short, and a time to go fishing”
– Jesse Livermore
“If most traders would learn to sit on their hands 50 percent of the time, they would make a lot more money.”
– Bill Lipschutz
“Throughout my financial career, I have continually witnessed examples of other people that I have known being ruined by a failure to respect risk. If you don’t take a hard look at risk, it will take you”
– Larry Hite
“Remember that stocks are never too high for you to begin buying or too low to begin selling”
– Jesse Livermore
“It is the job of the market to turn the base material of our emotions into gold”
– Andrei Codrescu
“You get a recession; you have stock market declines. If you don’t understand that’s going to happen, then you’re not ready, you won’t do well in the markets”
– Peter Lynch
“I have found that when the market’s going down, and you buy funds wisely, at some point in the future, you will be happy. You won’t get there by reading. Now is the time to buy”
– Peter Lynch
“The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent”
– John Maynard Keynes
“Invest for the long haul. Don’t get too greedy and don’t get too scared”
– Shelby M.C. Davis
“One of the funny things about the stock market is that every time one person buys, another sells, and both think they are astute”
– William Feather
“Stock market bubbles don’t grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality, but reality as distorted by a misconception.”
– George Soros
“Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas”
– Paul Samuelson
“A handful of men have become very rich by paying attention to details that most others ignored”
– Henry Ford
“The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient”
– Warren Buffett
“All the math you need in the stock market you get in the fourth grade”
– Peter Lynch
“If you are shopping for common stocks, choose them the way you would buy groceries, not the way you would buy perfume”
– Benjamin Graham
“A company has only so much money and managerial time. Winning leaders invest where the payback is the highest. They cut their losses everywhere else”
– Jack Welch
“We are in the business of making mistakes. Winners make small mistakes; losers make big mistakes”
– Ned Davis
“In the short run, a market is a voting machine, but in the long run, it is a weighing machine”
– Benjamin Graham
“There’s no shame in losing money on a stock. Everybody does it. What is shameful is to hold on to a stock, or worse, to buy more of it when the fundamentals are deteriorating”
– Peter Lynch
“The big money is not in the buying or the selling, but in the waiting”
– Charlie Munger
“Seek advice on risk from the wealthy who still take risks, not friends who dare nothing more than a football bet”
– J. Paul Getty
“You make most of your money in a bear market; you just don’t realize it at the time.”
– Shelby Cullom Davis
“A peak performance trader is totally committed to being the best and doing whatever it takes to be the best. He feels totally responsible for whatever happens and thus can learn from mistakes. These people typically have a working business plan for trading because they treat trading as a business”
– Van K. Tharp
“We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful”
– Warren Buffett
“The key to trading success is emotional discipline. If intelligence were the key, there would be a lot more people making money trading… I know this will sound like a cliché, but the single most important reason that people lose money in the financial markets is that they don’t cut their losses short”
– Victor Sperandeo
“You don’t need to be a rocket scientist. Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with 130 IQ” – Warren Buffett
“Money is made by sitting, not trading”
– Jesse Livermore
“That cotton trade was almost the deal breaker for me. It was at that point that I said, ‘Mr. Stupid, why risk everything on one trade? Why not make your life a pursuit of happiness rather than pain?”
– Paul Tudor Jones
“I think investment psychology is by far the more important element, followed by risk control, with the least important consideration being the question of where you buy and sell”
– Tom Basso
“The goal of a successful trader is to make the best trades. Money is secondary”
– Alexander Elder
“You only have to do very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong”
– Warren Buffet
“The desire for constant action irrespective of underlying conditions is responsible for many losses in Wall Street even among the professionals, who feel that they must take home some money every day, as though they were working for regular wages”
– Jesse Livermore
“It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives. It’s what we do consistently”
– Anthony Robbins
“ It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently”
– Warren Buffett
“I’m always thinking about losing money as opposed to making money. Don’t focus on making money, focus on protecting what you have”
– Paul Tudor Jones
“It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.”
– Warren Buffett
“You have to identify your weaknesses and work to change. Keep a trading diary – write down your reasons for entering and exiting every trade. Look for repetitive patterns of success and failure”
– Alexander Elder
“It is always the best discretion to let the market show us where it is going and just simply follow, rather than predict where the market is going and place a position”
– Anne-Marie Beiynd
“In trading/investing, it’s not about how much you make but rather how much you don’t lose”
– Bernard Baruch
“If a trader is motivated by the money, then it is the wrong reason. A truly successful trader has got to be involved and into the trading, the money is the side issue. The principal motivation is not the trappings of success. It’s usually the by-product”
– Bill Lipschutz
“The core problem, however, is the need to fit markets into a style of trading rather than finding ways to trade that fit with market behavior”
– Brett Steenbarger
“My experience with novice traders is that they trade three to five times too big. They are taking 5 to 10 percent risks on a trade when they should be taking 1 to 2 percent risks”
– Bruce Kovner
“It’s waiting that helps you as an investor, and a lot of people just can’t stand to wait. If you didn’t get the deferred-gratification gene, you’ve got to work very hard to overcome that”
– Charlie Munger
“Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success”
– Christopher Isaac Stone
“Trade What’s Happening… Not What You Think Is Gonna Happen”
– Doug Gregory
“I set protective stops at the same time I enter a trade. I normally move these stops to lock in a profit as the trend continues”
– Ed Seykota
“The fundamental law of investing is the uncertainty of the future”
– Peter Bernstein
“If you can’t take a small loss, sooner or later you will take the mother of all losses”
– Ed Seykota
“By living the philosophy that my winners are always in front of me, it is not so painful to take a loss”
– Martin Schwartz
“Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux, and money is made by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected”
– George Soros
“Risk no more that you can afford to lose, and also risk enough so that a win is meaningful”
– Ed Seykota
“An average trader loses money, so in this profession, you need to be way above average to make consistent money trading the markets”
– Henrique M. Simões
“Win or lose, everybody gets what they want from the market. Some people seem to like to lose, so they win by losing money”
– Ed Seykota
“It’s not whether you’re right or wrong that’s important, it’s how much money you make when you’re right and how much you lose when you’re wrong”
– George Soros
“Accepting losses is the most important single investment device to ensure the safety of capital”
– Gerald M. Loeb
“There is no single market secret to discover, no single correct way to trade the markets. Those seeking the one true answer to the markets haven’t even gotten as far as asking the right question, let alone getting the right answer”
– Jack Schwager
“Trader has to reverse what you might call his natural impulses. Instead of hoping he must fear; instead of fearing he must hope. He must fear that his loss may develop into a much bigger loss, and hope that his profit may become a big profit”
– Jesse Livermore
“I just wait until there is money lying in the corner, and all I have to do is go over there and pick it up. I do nothing in the meantime.”
– Jim Rogers
“The hard work in trading comes in the preparation. The actual process of trading, however, should be effortless”
– Jack Schwager
“Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others”
– John Maynard Keynes
“I have learned through the years that after a good run of profits in the markets, it’s very important to take a few days off as a reward. The natural tendency is to keep pushing until the streak ends. But experience has taught me that a rest in the middle of the streak can often extend it”
– Martin Schwartz
“By risking 1%, I am indifferent to any individual trade. Keeping your risk small and constant is absolutely critical”
– Larry Hite
“Frankly, I don’t see markets; I see risks, rewards, and money”
– Larry Hite
“I get real, real concerned when I see trading strategies with too many rules”
– Larry Connors
“If you don’t respect risk, eventually they’ll carry you out”
– Larry Hite
“All you need is one pattern to make a living”
– Linda Raschke
“If you can learn to create a state of mind that is not affected by the market’s behavior, the struggle will cease to exist”
– Mark Douglas
“What seems too high and risky to the majority generally goes higher and what seems low and cheap generally goes lower”
– William O’Neil
“Why do you think unsuccessful traders are obsessed with market analysis? They crave the sense of certainty that analysis appears to give them. Although few would admit it, the truth is that the typical trader wants to be right on every single trade. He is desperately trying to create certainty where it just doesn’t exist”
– Mark Douglas
“A great trader is like a great athlete. You have to have natural skills, but you have to train yourself how to use them”
– Martin Schwartz
“I always laugh at people who say, “I’ve never met a rich technician.” I love that! It’s such an arrogant, nonsensical response. I used fundamentals for nine years and got rich as a technician”
– Martin Schwartz
When in doubt, get out and get a good night’s sleep. I’ve done that lots of times and the next day everything was clear… While you are in the position, you can’t think. When you get out, then you can think clearly again”
– Michael Marcus
“Learn to take losses. The most important thing in making money is not letting your losses get out of hand”
– Martin Schwartz
“My attitude is that I always want to be better prepared than someone I’m competing against. The way I prepare myself is by doing my work each night”
– Martin Schwartz
“When I became a winner, I said, “I figured it out, but if I’m wrong, I’m getting the hell out”, because I want to save my money and go on to the next trade”
– Martin Schwartz
“Don’t worry about what the markets are going to do, worry about what you are going to do in response to the markets”
– Michael Carr
“Trading is a waiting game. You sit, you wait, and you make a lot of money all at once. Profits come in bunches. The trick when going sideways between home runs is not to lose too much in-between”
– Michael Covel
“The men on the trading floor may not have been to school, but they have Ph.D.’s in man’s ignorance”
– Michael M. Lewis
“Every trader has strengths and weaknesses. Some are good holders of winners but may hold their losers a little too long. Others may cut their winners a little short but are quick to take their losses. As long as you stick to your own style, you get the good and bad in your own approach”
– Michael Marcus
“Good investing is a peculiar balance between the conviction to follow your ideas and the flexibility to recognize when you have made a mistake”
– Michael Steinhardt
“Some people make shoes. Some people make houses. We make money, and people are willing to pay us a lot to make money for them”
– Monroe Trout
“I was convinced that I was totally incompetent in predicting market prices – but that others were generally incompetent also but did not know it, or did not know they were taking massive risks. Most traders were just “picking pennies in front of a steamroller,” exposing themselves to the high-impact rare event yet sleeping like babies, unaware of it”
– Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“Trading is a psychological game. Most people think they are playing against the market, but the market doesn´t care. You’re really playing against yourself”
– Martin Schwartz
“A lot of people get so enmeshed in the markets that they lose their perspective. Working longer does not necessarily equate with working smarter. In fact, sometimes is the other way around”
– Martin Schwartz
“I believe in analysis and not forecasting”
– Nicolas Darvas
“5/1 risk/reward ratio allows you to have a hit rate of 20%. I can actually be a complete imbecile. I can be wrong 80% of the time and still not lose”
– Paul Tudor Jones
“Everyday I assume every position I have is wrong”
– Paul Tudor Jones
“There is a saying that bad traders divorce their spouse sooner than abandon their positions. Loyalty to ideas is not a good thing for traders, scientists – or anyone”
– Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“Where you want to be is always in control, never wishing, always trading, and always, first and foremost protecting your butt. After a while size means nothing. It gets back to whether you’re making 100% rate of return on $10,000 or $100 million dollars. It doesn’t make any difference”
– Paul Tudor Jones
“We want to perceive ourselves as winners, but successful traders are always focusing on their losses”
– Peter Borish
“Trading is very competitive and you have to be able to handle getting your butt kicked”
– Paul Tudor Jones