Top 178 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Traders

Just remember, without discipline, a clear strategy, and a concise plan, the speculator will fall into all the emotional pitfalls of the market - jump from one stock to another, hold a losing position too long, and cut out of a winner too soon, for no reason other than fear of losing profit. Greed, Fear, Impatience, Ignorance, and Hope will all fight for mental dominance over the speculator. Then, after a few failures and catastrophes the speculator may become demoralised, depressed, despondent, and abandon the market and the chance to make a fortune from what the market has to offer.

The trading rules I live by are: 1. Cut losses. 2. Ride winners. 3. Keep bets small. 4. Follow the rules without question. 5. Know when to break the rules.

The desire to maximize the number of winning trades (or minimize the number of losing trades) works against the trader. The success rate of trades is the least important performance statistic and may even be inversely related to performance.

Perhaps my number one rule is: Don't try to make a profit on a bad trade, just try to find the best place to get out.

My only goal was to make the largest profit possible for my employer. I was caught in a spiral that - with the support of my bosses - continued to lead up and up.

Being a successful trader also takes courage: the courage to try, the courage to fail, the courage to succeed, and the courage to keep on going when the going gets tough.

If most traders would learn to sit on their hands 50 per cent of the time, they would make a lot more money.

The moral is that in trading it's important to examine the situation from as many angles as possible, because your initial impulses are probably going to be wrong. There is never any money to be made in the obvious conclusions.

The most important thing in making money is not letting your losses get out of hand.

I only know one thing: Everything I learned about the banking business, I learned in the banking towers of the Societe.

Traders and Surfers both have to deal with feelings of missing out on the small ones, until the big one comes along. They also have to deal with feelings of staying with the big one.

My aim was to make money for the bank. You lose track of the amounts involved when you are engaged in this kind of work.

Never try to sell at the top. It isn't wise. Sell after a reaction if there is no rally.

It’s all about sticking to your plan and experiencing feelings as they arise. If you are unwilling to feel your feelings, the temptation is to avoid them by jumping off your system

I believe my most important skill is an ability to perceive patterns in the market. I think this aptitude for pattern recognition is probably related to my heavy involvement with music.

When you're in a losing streak, your ability to properly assimilate and analyze information starts to become distorted because of the impairment of the confidence factor, which is a by-product of a losing streak. You have to work very hard to restore that confidence, and cutting back trading size helps achieve that goal.

I don't know whether I make myself plain, but I never lose my temper over the stock market. I never argue with the tape. Getting sore at the market doesn't get you anywhere.

I believe that only short-term price swings can be predicted with any precision. The accuracy of a prediction drops off dramatically, the more distant the forecast time. I'm a strong believer in chaos theory.

I would add that I consider myself and how I do things as a kind of system which, by definition, I always follow.

Fortune tellers live in the future. So do people who want to put things off. So do fundamentalists.

The market does not beat them. They beat themselves, because though they have brains they cannot sit tight.

My style is basically trend following, with some special pattern recognition and money management algorithms.

Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.

Don't think about what the market's going to do; you have absolutely no control over that. Think about what you're going to do if it gets there.

I turn bullish at the instant my buy stop is hit, and stay bullish until my sell stop is hit.

A prudent speculator never argues with the tape. Markets are never wrong, opinions often are.

Remember this: When you are doing nothing, those speculators who feel they must trade day in and day out, are laying the foundation for your next venture. You will reap benefits from their mistakes.

"I can't sleep" answered the nervous one. "Why not?" asked the friend. "I am carrying so much cotton that I can't sleep thinking about. It is wearing me out. What can I do?" "Sell down to the sleeping point", answered the friend.

If you ever find yourself tempted to seek out someone else's opinion on a trade, that's usually a sure sign that you should get out of your position.

To anticipate the market is to gamble. To be patient and react only when the market gives the signal is to speculate.

I never argue with the tape. To be angry at the market because it unexpectedly or even illogically goes against you is like getting mad at your lungs because you have pneumonia.

Pyramiding instructions appear on dollar bills. Add smaller and smaller amounts on the way up. Keep your eye open at the top.

Writing down your trades is the best exercise in the world.

Markets are fundamentally volatile. No way around it. Your problem is not in the math. There is no math to get you out of having to experience uncertainty.

The market likes to lull you into the false security of high success rate techniques, which often lose disastrously in the long run. The general idea is that what works most of the time is nearly the opposite of what works in the long run.

It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting.

Speech may be silver but silence is golden. Traders with the golden touch do not talk about their success.

A losing trader can do little to transform himself into a winning trader. A losing trader is not going to want to transform himself. That's the kind of thing winning traders do.

There is only one side to the stock market; and it is not the bull side or the bear side, but the right side

Investing is a negative game emotionally. If you're playing for the emotional satisfaction, you're bound to lose, because what feels good is often the wrong thing to do. When all the criteria are in balance, do the thing you least want to do.

In many ways, large profits are even more insidious than large losses in terms of emotional destabilization. I think it's important not to be emotionally attached to large profits. I've certainly made some of my worst trades after long periods of winning. When you're on a big winning streak, there's a temptation to think that you're doing something special, which will allow you to continue to propel yourself upward. You start to think that you can afford to make shoddy decisions. You can imagine what happens next. As a general rule, losses make you strong and profits make you weak.

Always understand the risk/reward of the trade as it now stands, not as it existed when you put the position on. Some people say, "I was only playing with the market's money." That's the most ridiculous thing I ever heard.

Money is made by sitting, not trading.

The price pattern reminds you that every movement of importance is but a repetition of similar price movements, that just as soon as you can familiarize yourself with the actions of the past, you will be able to anticipate and act correctly and profitably upon forthcoming movements.

Good traders trade. Good letter writers write letters.

Given the nature of market, the chance of a crash is always greater than the chance of an overnight runaway euphoria.

It is a happy circumstance that when nature gives us true burning desires, she also gives us the means to satisfy them. Those who want to win and lack skill can get someone with skill to help them.

Be sensitive to subtle differences between 'intuition' and 'into wishing'.

I don't think you can consistently be a winning trader if you're banking on being right more than 50 percent of the time. You have to figure out how to make money being right only 20 to 30 percent of the time.

I always laugh at people who say "I've never met a rich technician" I love that! Its such an arrogant, nonsensical response. I used fundamentals for 9 years and got rich as a technician

Systems don't need to be changed. The trick is for a trader to develop a system with which he is compatible.

A market does not culminate in one grand blaze of glory. Neither does it end with a sudden reversal of form. A market can and does often cease to be a bull market long before prices generally begin to break.

I did precisely the wrong thing. The cotton showed me a loss and I kept it. The wheat showed me a profit and I sold it out. Of all the speculative blunders there are few greater than trying to average a losing game. Always sell what shows you a loss and keep what shows you a profit.

You can be very promiscuous in your research, but not in your trading.

Never buy at the bottom, and always sell too soon.

If you can't take a small loss, sooner or later you will take the mother of all losses.

It can be very expensive to try to convince the markets you are right.

The people who survive avoid snowball scenarios in which bad trades cause them to become emotionally destabilized and make more bad trades. They are also able to feel the pain of losing. If you don't feel the pain of a loss, then you're in the same position as those unfortunate people who have no pain sensors. If they leave their hand on a hot stove, it will burn off. There is no way to survive in the world without pain. Similarly, in the markets, if the losses don't hurt, your financial survival is tenuous.

If a betting game among a certain number of participants I played long enough, eventually one player will have all the money. If there is any skill involved, it will accelerate the process of concentrating all the stakes in a few hands. Something like this happens in the market. There is a persistent overall tendency for equity to flow from the many to the few. In the long run, the majority loses. The implication for the trader is that to win you have to act like the minority. If you bring normal human habits and tendencies to trading, you'll gravitate toward the majority and inevitably lose.

I cannot fear to be wrong because I never think I'm wrong until I am proven wrong. In fact, I am uncomfortable unless I am capitalizing my experience.