"I'm always thinking about losing money as opposed to making money. Don't focus on making money, focus on protecting what you have."
"At the end of the day, the most important thing is how good are you at risk control. Ninety-percent of any great trader is going to be the risk control."
"Don't be a hero. Don't have an ego. Always question yourself and your ability. Don't ever feel that you are very good. The second you do, you are dead."
"Don't ever average losers. Decrease your trading volume when you are trading poorly; increase your volume when you are trading well."
"All through time, people have basically acted and reacted the same way in the market as a result of: greed, fear, ignorance, and hope. That is why the numerical formations and patterns recur on a con…"
"The elements of good trading are (1) cutting losses, (2) cutting losses, and (3) cutting losses. If you can follow these three rules, you may have a chance."
"The human side of every person is the greatest enemy of the average speculator."
"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."
"A prudent speculator never argues with the tape. Markets are never wrong-- opinions often are."
"Cut your losses, let your winners run."
"The game taught me the game. And it didn't spare me rod while teaching."
"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 comin…"
"I always say you could publish rules in a newspaper and no one would follow them. The key to successful trading is emotional discipline."
"I'm relaxed at what I am doing because I have a plan. I know what I want to do, and I am really trying to execute it. I think most traders do too much thinking on the spot."
"The market is not your enemy; your mind is."
"Trading is a battle against your own emotions, not the market."
"You don't need to know what is going to happen next in order to make money."
"Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful."
"Price is what you pay. Value is what you get."
"It's not whether you're right or wrong that matters, but how much money you make when you're right and how much you lose when you're wrong."
"The trick is to survive first and make money afterward."
"Earnings don't move the overall market; it's the Federal Reserve Board. Focus on the central banks, and focus on the movement of liquidity."
"You need to be aggressive when you're right and be humble when you're wrong."
"If you're early on in your career and they give you a choice between a great mentor or higher pay, take the mentor every time. It's not even close."
"Bulls make money, bears make money, but pigs get slaughtered."
"Don't look for the needle in the haystack. Just buy the haystack!"
"Time in the market beats timing the market."
"I call investing the greatest business in the world because you never have to swing. You stand at the plate, the pitcher throws you General Motors at 47! U.S. Steel at 39! And nobody calls a strike o…"
"Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it; he who doesn't, pays it."
"Diversification is protection against ignorance. It makes little sense if you know what you are doing."
"Our favorite holding period is forever."
"The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective."
"Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."
"The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient."
"Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing."
"Nobody ever rings a bell at the top or bottom of the market."
"Buy the rumor, sell the news."
"Position sizing is more important than entry and exit points."
"I never buy at the bottom and I always sell too soon."
"The key to long-term survival and prosperity has a lot to do with the money management techniques incorporated into the technical system."
"A lot of people would rather understand the market than make money."
"Don't take action with a trade until the market, itself, confirms your opinion. Being a little late in a trade is insurance that your opinion is correct."
"The game of speculation is the most uniformly fascinating game in the world. But it is not a game for the stupid, the mentally lazy, the person of inferior emotional balance, or the get-rich-quick ad…"
"Successful traders always follow the line of least resistance. Follow the trend. The trend is your friend."
"When you have a position, you put it on for a reason, and you've got to keep it until the reason no longer exists."
"The best traders not only take the risk, they have also learned to accept and embrace that risk."
"An edge is nothing more than an indication of a higher probability of one thing happening over another."
"The most important thing in making money is not to let your losses run."
"I will tell you how to become rich. Close the doors. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful."
"Far more money has been lost by investors preparing for corrections, or trying to anticipate corrections, than has been lost in corrections themselves."
"It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change."
"Volume is the fuel that drives price movement."
"Every trade has an opportunity cost. Choose wisely."
"History doesn't repeat, but it often rhymes."
"Rule number one: Never lose money. Rule number two: Don't forget rule number one."
"Technical analysis tells you when, fundamental analysis tells you what."
"Old resistance becomes new support, and old support becomes new resistance."
"The trend is your friend, until the bend at the end."
"Markets move in cycles. What goes up must come down, and what goes down will eventually go up."
"Study the habits of successful traders, not their predictions."
"When everyone thinks alike, no one thinks very much."
"Never risk more than 1% of your trading capital on any single trade."
"A disciplined trader with a mediocre system will outperform a brilliant trader without discipline."
"You don't have to swing at every pitch. Wait for your pitch."
"Failing to prepare is preparing to fail."
"The market can teach you a lot about yourself if you're willing to listen."
"The day you stop learning is the day you start losing."
"Success in trading comes from consistency, not from home runs."
"Expect to be wrong often. Plan for it, prepare for it, and profit from it."
"A good system traded poorly will lose money. A poor system traded well might make money."
"The market doesn't care about your feelings, your bills, or your dreams."
"Think like a trader, invest like an investor."
"Writing down your trades is the best exercise in the world."
"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 firm believer in predicting price direction, but not magnitude. I don't set price targets. I get out when the market action tells me it's time to get out."
"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."
"I really value the fact that I've learned to trade as a craft. Like any craft, such as piano playing, consistency is achievable if you practice day in and day out."
"You don't have to be a rocket scientist to be a trader. In fact, some of the best traders whom I knew down on the floor were surf bums. Formal education didn't really seem to have much to do with a p…"
"You cannot trade the markets. You trade your beliefs about the markets."
"Position sizing is one of the most important aspects of trading, yet so few people teach it."
"Always bet less than 5 percent of your money on any one idea. That way you can be wrong more than twenty times; it will take you a long time to lose your money."
"The best trades are the ones in which you have all three things going for you: fundamentals, technicals and market tone."
"For most great traders, early failure is more the rule than the exception."
"If you get in trouble on a trade, just get out of the trade and clear your mind. You can get back in later if you want to."
"I know where I'm getting out before I get in."
"Don't get caught in a situation in which you can lose a great deal of money for reasons you don't understand."
"The less explanation there is for a price move occurring, the better it looks."
"Throughout my financial career, I have continually witnessed examples of other people that I have known being ruined by a failure to respect risk."
"Actually, the best traders have no ego. To be a great trader, you have to have confidence in yourself. You cannot let ego get in the way of a trade that is a loser."
"They trade too much. They don't pick their spots selectively enough. So, they end up forcing the trade rather than waiting patiently. Patience is an important trait many people don't have."
"You have to adapt. You need to change your method of buying and selling, because the market is continually changing in subtle ways."
"The goal of a successful trader is to make the best trades. Money is secondary."
"You can only control your behavior. The market does not know you exist. You can do nothing to influence it."
"Successful trading depends on the 3M's - Mind, Method and Money. Every winner needs to master three essential components of trading."
"Amateurs look for challenges; professionals look for easy trades. Losers get high from the action; the pros look for the best odds."
"The secret is cutting down the number of trades you make."
"You have to be willing to make mistakes regularly; there is nothing wrong with it. Making your best judgment, being wrong, making your next best judgment, being wrong, making your third best judgment…"
"Understand that learning the market can take years. Immerse yourself in the world of trading and give up everything else. Get as close to other successful traders as you can."
"Attitude is how you deal with the inevitable adverse situations that occur in the markets. Attitude is also how you handle the daily grind, the constant 2 steps forward and 2 steps back."
"I truly feel that I could give away all my secrets and it wouldn't make any difference. Most people can't control their emotions or follow a system."
"The markets are unforgiving, and emotional trading always results in losses."
"The three key components of trading are knowledge, courage, and discipline."
"Never put all your eggs in one basket."
"Follow the smart money, not the crowd."
"Trade the chart, not the news."
"A strategy that works is better than a perfect strategy that's never followed."
"Capital preservation is the first rule of trading."
"Hope is not a strategy, it's a prayer."
"The market doesn't care about your position or your opinion."
"The goal is not to be right, but to live to trade another day."
"A stop loss is insurance you hope you never need but are glad you have."
"Every trade is a lesson, whether it's profitable or not."
"Markets reward patience and punish impatience."
"Simple strategies consistently applied beat complex systems poorly executed."
"Trade size determines your stress level more than your P&L."
"Cut your losses quickly and let your profits run slowly."
"Markets discount the future, not the past."
"Your biggest enemy in trading is the person in the mirror."
"Confidence keeps you in the game; arrogance takes you out."
"Practice doesn't make perfect; it makes consistent."
"Market cycles repeat because human nature never changes."
"Price action is the ultimate indicator."
"Focus on the process and the profits will follow."
"In trading, what you don't know can hurt you more than what you do know."
"Learn to be comfortable with being wrong often."
"Markets test your convictions, not your predictions."
"Stay flexible in your methods but rigid in your discipline."
"Think like a casino: understand the odds and let probability work for you."
"Too much information can be as dangerous as too little."
"Winners win because they do things differently, not because they do different things."
"Always have an exit plan because you might be wrong."
"Take small losses and big wins. It's math, not magic."
"The market never sleeps, but you should."
"Trade what you know, not what you hope."
"Losing is part of winning in trading."
"Protect your capital like it's your last dollar, because one day it might be."
"Don't fight trends; join them until they end."
"When emotion and discipline collide, discipline must win."
"In trading, money management is everything else is commentary."
"Perfect timing is impossible; good timing is achievable."
"Wait for your setups; don't force them."
"Trading success requires sacrificing what you want now for what you want most."
"Knowing when to walk away is as important as knowing when to enter."
"Small consistent gains compound into large fortunes."
"Stay hungry for knowledge and humble before the market."
"Never risk what you cannot afford to lose."
"Proper planning prevents poor trading performance."
"Trading mistakes are expensive tuition for market education."
"Markets are efficient at humbling overconfident traders."
"Find your edge and trade it repeatedly."
"Losses teach better lessons than wins."
"Position size is more important than being right or wrong."
"Trust your system over your gut feelings."
"Treat trading like a business, not a hobby."
"Trade within your emotional and financial means."
"Focus on quality trades, not trading activity."
"In trading, expect the unexpected and plan for it."
"Winners adapt their methods as market conditions change."
"The moment you stop learning is the moment you start failing."
"Emotional decisions are the most expensive ones in trading."
"In trading, you are your own boss and your own employee."
"Markets are the best teachers of patience and discipline."
"Where there is no risk, there is no opportunity."
"The best trading strategies are often the simplest ones."
"Master your emotions or they will master your trading account."
"Trading is a marathon, not a sprint. Pace yourself accordingly."
"Successful trading has rules; follow them religiously."
"The key to trading success is staying in the game long enough to win."
"In the end, successful trading is about managing yourself, not predicting markets."
"The secret to successful investing is relatively simple: Figure out the value of something and then pay a lot less."
"I try to buy shares of unpopular companies when they look like road kill and sell them when they've been polished up a bit."
"All my stock picking is 100% based on the concept of a margin of safety."
"The avoidance of loss is the surest way to ensure a profitable outcome."
"Holding cash in the absence of opportunity makes sense."
"Patience is the cheapest form of capital."
"I am the animal at the head of the pack. I either get eaten, or I get the good grass."
"In trading you have to be defensive and aggressive at the same time. If you are not aggressive, you are not going to make any money, and if you are not defensive, you are not going to keep it."
"I believe my most important skill is an ability to perceive patterns in the market."
"You don't have to be a rocket scientist to be a trader. In fact, some of the best traders whom I knew down on the floor were surf bums."
"Always bet less than 5 percent of your money on any one idea. That way you can be wrong more than twenty times."
"The best traders have no ego. To be a great trader, you have to have confidence in yourself."
"When you feel like bragging, it's probably time to sell."
"Always keep your portfolio and your risk at your own individual comfortable sleeping point."
"Patience is a crucial but rare investment commodity."
"I paraphrase Lord Rothschild: 'The time to buy is when there's blood on the streets.'"
"Diversification is a damn poor surrogate for knowledge."
"Free cash flow gives companies the luxury to do good things, whether it's pay dividends, buy back stock, invest in new plant equipment."
"We are trying to look for the straw hats in the winter. In the winter, people don't buy straw hats, so they're on sale."
"I may have been early, but I'm not wrong."
"In investing, what is comfortable is rarely profitable."
"Low price is the ultimate source of margin for error."
"You can't be a good value investor without being an independent thinker – you're seeing valuations that the market is not appreciating."
"I don't believe anything unless I understand it inside out."
"Amateurs want to be right. Professionals want to make money."
"The market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient."
"It’s not whether you’re right or wrong that’s important, but how much money you make when you’re right and how much you lose when you’re wrong."
"The elements of good trading are: (1) cutting losses, (2) cutting losses, and (3) cutting losses."
"The hard cold fact is that only about five percent of traders succeed in the long run."
"An investor without investment objectives is like a traveler without a destination."
"The four most dangerous words in investing are: ‘This time it’s different.’"
"Opportunities come infrequently. When it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble."
"Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment."
"Losers average losers."
"The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."
"Don’t focus on making money; focus on protecting what you have."
"Every battle is won before it is fought."
"The key to trading success is emotional discipline. If intelligence were the key, there would be a lot more people making money trading."
"The trend is your friend until the end when it bends."
"Profits are made by sitting, not trading."
"If you personalize losses, you can’t trade."
"Markets are never wrong, opinions often are."
"The most important quality for an investor is temperament, not intellect."
"Trend following is the only trading style that works across centuries."
"Never, ever argue with your trading system."
"Do more of what works and less of what doesn’t."
"Do not anticipate and move without market confirmation – being a little late in your trade is your insurance that you are right or wrong."
"Most traders take a good system and destroy it by trying to make it into a perfect system."
"In trading/investing, it’s not about how much you make but rather how much you don’t lose."
"I have two basic rules about winning in trading as well as in life: 1. If you don’t bet, you can’t win. 2. If you lose all your chips, you can’t bet."
"If you personalise losses, you can’t trade."
"Where you want to be is always in control, never wishing, always trading, and always, first and foremost protecting your butt."
"The most important rule of trading is to play great defense, not great offense."
"What is most important isn’t knowing the future — it is knowing how to react appropriately to the information available at each point in time."
"The biggest mistake investors make is to believe that what happened in the recent past is likely to persist. They assume that something that was a good investment in the recent past is still a good i…"
"It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who has been swimming naked."
"The trend is your friend – until it stabs you in the back with a chopstick."
"Bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism and die of euphoria."
"One of the funny things about the stock market is that every time one person buys, another sells, and both think they are astute."
"The main purpose of stock market is to make fools of as many men as possible."
"There are old traders and there are bold traders, but there are very few old, bold traders."
"Entering trades is like a real battle – if you want to win it, you need to be ready and prepare for it. Markets are unpredictable, and you can’t predict every possible scenario, but what you can cont…"
"Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again."
"Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux, and money is made by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected."
"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest."
"Bottoms in the investment world don’t end with four‑year lows; they end with 10‑ or 15‑year lows."
"Letting your emotions override your plan or system is the biggest cause of failure."
"Some traders are born with an innate discipline. Most have to learn it the hard way."
"If you can’t deal with emotion, get out of trading."
"When all are bearish, there is cause for prices to rise."
"When all are bullish, there is cause for prices to fall."
"You make most of your money by sitting, not by trading."
"It’s not the will to win that matters — everyone has that. It’s the will to prepare to win that matters."
"Most people can’t accept losses. That’s why they can’t accept trading."
"The market will always test your pain threshold. Winners have simply learned to live with it."
"You don’t have to win often. You just have to lose well."
"Trading is not about finding certainty. It’s about managing uncertainty."
"The edge is not in the setup. The edge is in your ability to execute it consistently without flinching."
"Stop searching for the holy grail system. The grail is you."
"Losers think in terms of money. Winners think in terms of process."
"Fear will always be present. The professional trader simply acts anyway."
"Hope is not a strategy. Cut the loss and move on."
"When you can sit with discomfort, you are already ahead of 90% of traders."
"The only way to win big is to learn how to lose small."
"You will never conquer the market. You must conquer yourself."
"A losing trade doesn’t make you a loser. Quitting does."
"Trading is a mirror. It shows you your strengths and your weaknesses — brutally."
"You don’t need more indicators. You need more discipline."
"Consistency beats brilliance."
"Winners aren’t fearless. They just fear not trying more than they fear losing."
"The amateur reacts. The professional prepares."
"You will always lose trades. The question is whether you lose your head too."
"The market is not against you. It is simply indifferent to you."
"Risk is not the enemy. Mismanaging risk is."
"Stop trying to be right. Start trying to trade well."
"Every trade is just one of the next thousand. Don’t make it bigger than it is."
"If you can’t sit with boredom, you won’t sit with profits."
"There are no mistakes in trading, only tuition fees."
"The market is never wrong; opinions often are."
"It was never my thinking that made the big money for me. It was always my sitting."
"A loss never bothers me after I take it. I forget it overnight. But being wrong—not taking the loss—that is what does damage."
"Win or lose, everybody gets what they want out of the market."
"If you can't take a small loss, sooner or later you will take the mother of all losses."
"You could publish my trading rules in the newspaper and no one would follow them. The key is consistency and discipline."
"Trading was more teachable than I ever imagined. Even though I was skeptical at first, it is a skill that can be taught."
"Novice traders trade 5 to 10 times too big. They are taking 5 to 10 percent risks on a trade when they should be taking 1 to 2 percent risks."
"As long as you stick to your rules, you can make mistakes and still be profitable."
"Every trader has to learn that trading is not about being right. It’s about making money."
"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."
"Anything can happen in the market."
"You don’t need to know what’s going to happen next in order to make money."
"The consistency you seek is in your mind, not in the markets."
"Trading is not about prediction. It’s about probability and discipline."
"Amateurs think about how much money they can make. Professionals think about how much money they could lose."
"The markets are the same now as they were five to ten years ago because they keep changing—just as they did then."
"You need to be able to survive before you can thrive."
"There are a million ways to make money in the markets. The irony is that they are all very difficult to find."
"One of the most important lessons I learned is that winning traders think in terms of risk and losing traders think in terms of reward."
"Trading gives you the opportunity to find out if you can survive your own emotions."
"The stock market is designed to transfer money from the Active to the Patient."
"Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget rule No. 1."
"Know what you own, and know why you own it."
"In the long run, it’s not just how much money you make that will determine your future prosperity—it’s how much of it you keep."
"The key to making money in stocks is not to get scared out of them."
"I’m only rich because I know when I’m wrong. I basically have survived by recognizing my mistakes."
"The best investors are the ones who know when to cut their losses."
"Never, ever invest in the present. It doesn’t matter what a company is earning, what they have earned. You have to visualize the situation 18 months from now."
"He who lives by the crystal ball will eat shattered glass."
"Pain + Reflection = Progress."
"The market is the most efficient mechanism anywhere in the world for transferring wealth from impatient people to patient people."
"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."
"It can be very expensive to try to convince the markets you are right."
"Traders lose money because they let losers run, and they cut winners short."
"Good trading is about finding the balance between patience and aggressiveness."
"Scalping is like a high-wire act without a safety net."
"I never think about taking a huge position. I think about playing good defense."
"A mistake is when you don’t follow your rules. A losing trade is not a mistake."
"You do not trade the markets. You trade your beliefs about the markets."
"Position sizing is the key to long-term success."
"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."
"The most important change in my trading career occurred when I learned to divorce my ego from the trade."
"Learn to take losses. The most important thing in making money is not letting your losses get out of hand."
"The market doesn’t care about your opinion, only your discipline."
"Trading is about finding out who you are when money is on the line."
"The markets are the same now as they were a hundred years ago because they keep changing."
"The market is not about prices. It is about psychology."
"The investor’s chief problem—and even his worst enemy—is likely to be himself."
"An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and an adequate return."
"The essence of investment management is the management of risks, not the management of returns."
"Risk is the most important factor in trading. Control it, and the rest will follow."
"Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."
"Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others."
"The market can remain illogical longer than you or I can remain solvent."
"The emotions you suppress will come back to control your decisions."
"The key to performance is emotional flexibility."
"Invest in preparedness, not in prediction."
"The markets reward you for how you respond to randomness, not for what you know."
"Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! The market is the same way."
"You can’t predict. You can prepare."
"The biggest investing errors come not from factors that are informational or analytical, but from those that are psychological."
"It’s not what you buy, it’s what you pay for it that determines success or failure."
"The hardest work in investing is not intellectual; it’s emotional."
"Successful investing is about managing risk, not avoiding it."
"The stock market is filled with individuals who know the price of everything but the value of nothing."
"The greatest investment returns come from finding outstanding companies and holding them for the long term."
"The market is like a man walking his dog. The man walks slowly in a straight line, the dog runs ahead, falls behind, and occasionally comes back."
"Buy on the cannons, sell on the trumpets."
"If you want to earn money in the market, you must have patience, patience, and patience."
"I made up my mind to buy high and sell higher."
"The only sound reason for buying a stock is because it’s going up."
"I never bought a stock at the low or sold one at the high in my life. That’s only a newspaper fiction."
"The whole secret to winning in the stock market is to lose the least amount possible when you’re not right."
"The market is human nature and crowd psychology on daily display."
"The most successful people in the stock market are those who do their homework."
"If you worry, you don't have to worry. And if you don't worry, you need to worry, because if you worry, you will make sure the thing you worry about doesn't happen."
"Past performance is the best predictor of success."
"We search through historical data looking for anomalous patterns that we would not expect to occur at random."
"If most traders would learn to sit on their hands 50 percent of the time, they would make a lot more money."
"The trick is not to learn to trust your gut feelings, but rather to discipline yourself to ignore them."
"Everyone has the brain power to make money in stocks. Not everyone has the stomach."
"Your ultimate success or failure will depend on your ability to ignore the worries of the world long enough to allow your investments to succeed."
"The real key to making money in stocks is not to get scared out of them."
"Achieving success in trading is not a question of intelligence; instead, it is dependent on the trader's ability to be disciplined enough to execute his strategy all the time."
"340 is a chip shot."
"Predicting the future with certainty is impossible. The focus should be on reacting appropriately to the information available at each moment."
"I've changed my mind about cash as an asset: I no longer think cash is trash. At existing interest rates and with the Fed shrinking the balance sheet, it is now about neutral."
"The list of qualities an investor should have include patience, self-reliance, common sense, a tolerance for pain, open-mindedness, detachment, persistence, humility, flexibility."
"People who succeed in the stock market also accept periodic losses, setbacks, and unexpected occurrences."
"There is time to go long, time to go short, and time to go fishing."
"Money is made by sitting, not trading."
"Whenever I enter a position, I have a predetermined stop. That is the only way I can sleep."
"It's not whether you're right or wrong that's important, but how much money you make when you're right and how much you lose when you're wrong."
"Principles are what allow you to live a life consistent with those values."
"The market has no memory. Today's good news is tomorrow's bad news."
"Fundamentalists who say they are not going to pay any attention to the charts are like a doctor who says he's not going to take a patient's temperature."
"When you achieve complete acceptance of the uncertainty of each edge and the uniqueness of each moment, your frustration with trading will end."
"I always say that you could publish trading rules in the newspaper and no one would follow them. The key is consistency and discipline."