Top 178 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Traders - Page 3

There is time to go long, time to go short and time to go fishing.

I only wanted to be a good employee who generated as much profit as possible for his employer. I was merely a small cog in the machine - and now I'm suddenly supposedly the main person responsible for the financial crisis.

It is what people actually did in the stock market that counted - not what they said they were going to do.

People who look for easy money invariable pay for the privilege of proving conclusively that it cannot be found on this earth.

Perhaps the most important rule is to hold on to your winners and cut your losers. Both are equally important. If you don’t stay with your winners, you are not going to be able to pay for the losers.

Amateurs go broke taking large losses, professionals go broke taking small profits.

Professional traders have always had some system or other based upon their experience and governed either by their attitude towards speculation or by their desires.

I know of a few multimillionaires who started trading with inherited wealth. In each case, they lost it all because they didn't feel the pain when they were losing. In those formative first few years of trading, they felt they could afford to lose. You're much better off going into the market on a shoestring, feeling that you can't afford to lose. I'd rather bet on somebody starting out with a few thousand dollars than on somebody who came in with millions.

I never hesitate to tell a man that I am bullish or bearish. But I do not tell people to buy or sell any particular stock. In a bear market all stocks go down and in a bull market they go up.

The stock market is never obvious. It is designed to fool most of the people, most of the time.

Good systems tend to violate normal human tendencies.

When a man is right he wants to get all that is coming to him for being right.

Trying to trade during a losing streak is emotionally devastating. Trying to play 'catch up' is lethal.

If you can't sleep at night because of your stock market position, then you have gone too far. If this is the case, then sell your position down to the sleeping level.

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 investments after long periods of winning.

Trend following is an exercise in observing and responding to the ever-present moment of now

If you want to know everything about the market, go to the beach. Push and pull your hands with the waves. Some are bigger waves, some are smaller. But if you try to push the wave out when it's coming in, it'll never happen. The market is always right.

Fundamentals that you read about are typically useless as the market has already discounted the price, and I call them “funny-mentals”. However, if you catch on early, before others believe, you might have valuable “surprise-a-mentals”.

If I learned all this so slowly it was because I learned by my mistakes, and some time always elapses between making a mistake and realizing it, and more time between realizing it and exactly determining it.

Trends become more apparent as you step further away from the chart.

A man may see straight and clearly and yet become impatient or doubtful when the market takes its time about doing as he figured it must do. That is why so many men in Wall Street, who are not at all in the sucker class, not even in the third grade, nevertheless lose money. The market does not beat them. They beat themselves, because though they have brains they cannot sit tight.

People want to buy cheap and sell dear; this by itself makes them countertrend. But the notion of cheapness or dearness must be anchored to something. People tend to view the prices they’re used to as normal and prices removed from these levels as aberrant. This perpective leads people to trade counter to an emerging trend on the assumption that prices will eventually return to “normal”. Therein lies the path to disaster.

A man must believe in himself and his judgement if he expects to make a living at this game. That is why I don't believe in tips."

He will risk half his fortune in the stock market with less reflection that he devotes to the selection of a medium-priced automobile.

Charting is a little like surfing. You dont have to know a lot about the physics of tides, resonance, and fluid dynamics in order to catch a good wave. You just have to be able to sense when its happening and then have the drive to act at the right time.

I don’t predict a nonexisting future.

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.'

It is foolhardy to make a second trade, if your first trade shows you a loss. Never average losses. Let this thought be written indelibly upon your mind.

If the losses don't hurt, your financial survival is tenuous.

I know from experience that nobody can give me a tip or a series of tips that will make more money for me than my own judgment.

If you ever have to ask someone else's opinion on a trade, you shouldn't be in it.

Dramatic and emotional trading experiences tend to be negative. Pride is a great banana peel, as are hope, fear, and greed. My biggest slip-ups occurred shortly after I got emotionally involved with positions.

Without faith in his own judgment no man can go very far in this game. That is about all I have learned - to study general conditions, to take a position and stick to it. I can wait without a twinge of impatience. I can see a setback without being shaken, knowing that it is only temporary.

When everyone thinks alike, there isn't much thinking taking place. Get out when you can, not when you have to.

If a man is both wise and lucky, he will not make the same mistake twice. But he will make any one of ten thousand brothers or cousins of the original.

At long as a stock is acting right, and the market is right, do not be in a hurry to take profits. One should never permit speculative ventures to run into investments.

A lot of people would rather understand the market than make money

If you can't measure it, you probably can't manage it Things you measure tend to improve.

The average man doesn't wish to be told that it is a bull or a bear market. What he desires is to be told specifically which particular stock to buy or sell. He wants to get something for nothing. He does not wish to work. He doesn't even wish to have to think.

The markets are the same now as they were five or ten years ago because they keep changing-just like they did then

Luck plays an enormous role in trading success. Some people were lucky enough to be born smart, while others were even smarter and got born lucky.

The idea of searching for some secret for trading success misses the point.

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. In particular, you should spend no time at all thinking about those rosy scenarios in which the market goes your way, since in those situations, there's nothing more for you to do. Focus instead on those things you want least to happen and on what your response will be.

There is the plain fool who does the wrong thing at all times anywhere, but there is the Wall Street fool who thinks he must trade all the time.

The key to long-term survival and prosperity has a lot to do with the money management techniques incorporated into the technical system.

It takes a man a long time to learn all the lessons of all his mistakes.

The desire for constant action irrespective of underlying conditions is responsible for many losses on 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.

We believe we can train any intelligent, quick thinking person to be a trader. We feel traders are made, not born.

Men who can both be right and sit tight are uncommon. I found it one of the hardest things to learn. But it is only after a stock operator has firmly grasped this that he can make big money.

Psychology motivates the quality of analysis and puts it to use. Psychology is the driver and analysis is the road map.

One common adage...that is completely wrongheaded is: You can't go broke taking profits. That's precisely how many traders do go broke. While amateurs go broke by taking large losses, professionals go broke by taking small profits.

Disregarding the big swing and trying to jump in and out was fatal to me. Nobody can catch all the fluctuations. In a bull market your game is to buy and hold until you believe that the bull market is near its end. To do this you must study general conditions and not tips or special factors affecting individual stocks.

When I'm bearish and I sell a stock, each sale must be at a lower level than the previous sale. When I am buying, the reverse is true. I must buy on a rising scale. I don't buy long stocks on a scale down, I buy on a scale up.

"On Pat Hearne - He made money in stocks, and that made people ask him for advice. He would never give any. If they asked him point-blank for his opinion about the wisdom of their commitments he used a favorite race-track maxim of his: "You can't tell till you bet.""

Don't give me timing, give me time

Trends come like a series of ocean waves, bringing the high tide when things are good and, as conditions recede, the low tide appears. These trends come unexpectedly, unpredictably, and they have to be weathered with temperance, poise, and patience- good or bad.

To avoid whipsaw losses, stop trading.

Instead of hoping he must fear and 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.