Trading Quotes

"Trade what you see, Not what you think"

Only buy stocks when the market declines 10% from that date a year ago, which happens once or twice a decade.— Eugene D. Brody (Oppenheimer Capital)

Your emotions are often a reverse indicator of what you ought to be doing.— John F. Hindelong (Dillon, Reed)

There is no place in the modern world for the unskilled; no one can hope for any genuine success who fails to give himself the most complete special education. The trained man has all the advantages on his side; the untrained man invites all the tragic possibilities of failure.--------RICHARD D. WYCKOFF

When all the experts and forecasts agree – something else is going to happen.

Bull markets are more fun than bear markets.

The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" - John Maynard Keynes

The commodity futures game is a money game —not a game involving the supply-demand of the actual commodity as commonly depicted. — R. Earl Hadady

Conditions  - When I am long of stocks it is because my reading of conditions has made me bullish. But you find many people, reputed to be intelligent, who are bullish because they have stocks. I do not allow my possessions—or my prepossessions either—to do any thinking for me. That is why I repeat that 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.---- LeFevre

Charts not only tell what was, they tell what is; and a trend from was to is (projected linearly into the will be) contains better percentages than clumsy guessing.— R. A. Levy

You get recessions, 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

“Every moment in the market is unique….and you don’t need to know what is going to happen next to make money.”----Mr. Mark Douglas of Trading in the Zone

"My first rule is not to lose money. Losing an opportunity is minor in comparison, because there are always new opportunities around the corner." - Burt Dohmen

"Most traders take a good system and destroy it by trying to make it into a perfect system."

The best trading method is to take advantage of the crowd's greed and fear. - Jesse Livermore

A man ought not to be led into trading by tokens. He should wait until the tape tells him that the time is ripe. As a matter of fact, millions upon millions of dollars have been lost by men who bought stocks because they looked cheap or sold them because they looked dear. The speculator is not an investor. His object is not to secure a steady return on his money at a good rate of interest, but to profit by either a rise or a fall in the price of whatever he may be speculating in. Therefore the thing to determine is the speculative line of least resistance at the moment of trading; and what he should wait for is the moment when that line defines itself, because that is his signal to get busy. LeFevre

"The opportunity of a lifetime must be seized during the lifetime of the opportunity." -Leonard Ravenhill

In case of doubt, decide in favour of what is correct -- Karl Kraus

One must be able to read the current level of market's hidden energy to be a master trader. Jesse Livermore

If you know yourself but not your enemy, you will lose a battle for every one that you win; and if you do not know yourself and do not know your enemy, you will never see victory.— Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Buy on the rumour, sell on the news

If you expect to continue to purchase stocks throughout your life, you should welcome price declines as a way to add stocks more cheaply to your portfolio.  Warren Buffett

If you want to have a better performance than the crowd, you must do things differently from the crowd.  Sir John Templeton

“Remember, you are in control, not the market” - Bradley Gilbert

“Happiness comes through good judgment, good judgment comes through experience, and experience comes through bad judgment.”

"To change emotional responses takes constant self-awareness, time, fundamental personal honesty, and the willingness to suffer the pain of letting something go that we feel is dear to us."  Brett Steenbarger

“If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.” - Bruce Lee

I learned that the markets offer the trader an opportunity to profit from price movement, and these opportunities are basically in perpetual motion. It is an environment where the individual has the freedom to create his own results, unimpeded by many of the constraints that exist in everyday social life. These never ending opportunities make the market a perfect mirror of the trader's attitude. What the trader sees in that movement and what he can do about it the markets have no control over. All the choices and all the power to turn these choices into experience reside in the mind of each trader.----The Disciplined Trader,Mark Douglas

"We must remove the emotional element as quickly as possible in trading. If you can do it before you put on a position, you have a good start."

I will not allow yesterday's success to lull me into today's complacency, for this is the greatest foundation of failure. -- Og Mandino

"I am just intelligent enough to understand that I have a predisposition to be fooled by randomness--and to accept the fact that I am rather emotional."

"The person who stops studying merely because he has finished school is forever hopelessly doomed to mediocrity, no matter what may be his calling. The way of success is the way of continuous pursuit of knowledge." --Napoleon Hill

“A doctor goes to medical school for four years before practicing medicine; a lawyer goes to law school for three years before beginning the practice of law; why then does a sufficient amount of money with which to trade qualify an unschooled individual to be a trader?”  W.D. Gann

"If you don't get what you want, it's a sign either that you did not seriously want it, or that you tried to bargain over the price." --Rudyard Kipling

"If you're not making mistakes, you're not trying hard enough." - Vince Lombardi

“But in all my experience, I have never been in any accident…of any sort worth speaking about. I have seen but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea. I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort.”   E.J. Smith, 1907, Captain, RMS Titanic

“Once you have a trading system with a positive expectation, you must establish money management rules. Follow them as if your life depended on them”

“Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster. When you try to climb a mountain to prove how big you are, you almost never make it. And even if you do it’s a hollow victory. In order to sustain the victory you have to prove yourself again and again in some other way, and again and again and again, driven forever to fill a false image, haunted by the fear that the image is not true and someone will find out. That’s never the way.”   Robert M. Pirsig

"Human emotion is both the source of opportunity in trading and the greatest challenge. Master it and you will succeed. Ignore it at your peril."

"Most successful traders at some stage have a breakthrough, an Aha! experience. Often this is not new information, or a new approach, but the time was just right, they had matured and were ready to ‘see’ in a new way, to apprehend things clearly on a conceptual level, rather than a technical level." Dirk Du Toit

"Even being right three or four times out of ten should yield a person a fortune if he has the sense to cut his losses quickly."  Bernard Baruch

“If the markets have a reality all their own, then the reason so many people fail is because they refuse to find out what that substance truly is and adapt to it. Market reality must be something so completely unpalatable or unacceptable to most people that they would rather fail at trading then embrace it. Of course, that is exactly the case. The true reality of trading and the markets as a whole is something that most people would rather die than accept.”

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."  Calvin Coolidge

“When emotions interfere with performance, you’ll often find evidence of inadequate training. Psychological assistance can aid the performance of a well-trained professional, but does not substitute for thorough training.”

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

"Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world."
Arthur Schopenhauer

"Markets always go to extremes and so do most individual stocks. They go higher or lower than they should based on fundamentals because human emotions are not bound by reason."

"The defining characteristic that separates the consistent winners from everyone else is this: The winners have attained a mindset--a unique set of attitudes--that allows them to remain disciplined, focused, and, above all, confident in spite of the adverse conditions." --Mark Douglas

In the end, I always believe my eyes rather than anything else .----Warren Buffett

Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux and money is made by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected.

You got to know when to hold ‘emknow when to fold ‘emKnow when to walk away and know when to run.You never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table.There’ll be time enough for countin’when the dealings done- Kenny Rogers, The Gamble

When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all of your thoughts break their bonds: your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive and you discover yourself to be a greater person than you ever dreamed yourself to be.” Patanjali

Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.

"If rule governance and conscientiousness in following rules is associated with market success, then traders want to use emotions to trigger greater attentiveness to plans and rules. This means creating associative cues between emotional arousal and the behaviors responsible for trading success." Brett N. Steenbarger

"I learned that there are only two points of view: The other person's and the best one. What I think is of no consequence. Mine must become the best one. Nowhere is this more true than in a zero-sum game."

"...our visual and decision environments are filtered to us courtesy of our eyes, our ears, our senses of smell and touch, and the master of it all, our brain. By the time we comprehend and digest information, it is not necessarily a true reflection of reality. Instead, it is our representation of reality, and this is the input we base our decisions on. In essence we are limited to the tools nature has given us, and the natural way in which we make decisions is limited by the quality and accuracy of these tools." --Dan Ariely

"A poor chess player can still make a remarkable move."  Wang Yinggui

"Not risking is the surest way of losing. If you do not risk, risk eventually comes to you. There is simply no way to avoid taking a risk. If a person postpones taking risks, the time eventually comes when he will either be forced to accept a situation that he does not like or take a risk unprepared."

"The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds."

Success actually can stimulate fears about failing and about the impossibility of success. These increased anxiety levels may result in self-destructive behaviour and a

succession of losing trades that bring the trader back to the starting point.----Trading to Win, Ari Kiev

There are no certainties in this investment world, and where there are no certainties, you should begin by understanding yourself."

Psychological
I sincerely feel that success in trading is 80 percent psychological and 20 percent one's methodology, be it fundamental or technical. For example, you can have a mediocre knowledge of fundamental and technical information, and if you are in psychological control, you can make money. ----The Disciplined Trader,Mark Douglas

"You never know when the markets will do what you think they are supposed to do. Many times, like God, the market does not deny, it just delays." Larry Williams

Bob's Lessons
1. Markets tend to return to the mean over time.
2. Excesses in one direction will lead to an opposite excess in the other direction.
3. There are no new eras – excesses are never permanent.
4. Exponential rising and falling markets usually go further than you think.
5. The public buys the most at the top and the least at the bottom.
6. Fear and greed are stronger than long-term resolve.
7. Markets are strongest when they are broad and weakest when they narrow to a handful of blue-chips.
8. Bear markets have three stages.

Your emotions are often a reverse indicator of what you ought to be doing. — John F. Hindelong (Dillon, Reed)

Remember, the market is designed to fool most of the people most of the time. Sometimes, the market will go contrary to what speculators have predicted. At these times, speculators must abandon their predictions and follow the action of the market. Never argue with the tape. Markets are never wrong, but opinions often are. I only try to react to what the market is telling me by its behaviour.- Jesse Livermore

The qualities essential to the equipment of a speculator are judgment, self-reliance, courage, prudence and pliability. To these could be added another quality, patience.”----Dickson G. Watts,

Wyckoff concluded: “If you do not possess courage, self-reliance, patience, prudence and pliability, cultivate those qualities. . . . You must train yourself . . . make a searching analysis of your own mental process.”

Is it volume which causes price changes, or do price changes cause volume—the hen or the egg, which came first?

Self-Control
If, in fact, you can't control or manipulate the markets and the markets have absolutely no power or control over you, then the responsibility for what you perceive and for your resulting behaviour resides only in you. The one thing you can control is yourself. As a trader, you have the power either to give yourself money or to give your money to other traders.----The Disciplined Trader,Mark Douglas

What seems too high and risky to the majority generally goes higher and what seems low and cheap generally goes lower.

Studies (see Waitzkin, Art of Learning) have shown that learners who learn for the sake of getting better continue to learn and progress but that when a learner focuses on winning, they become fragile, eventually reaching a place where they stop improving because they are afraid of losing.

If a stock doesn't act right don't touch it; because, being unable to tell precisely what is wrong, you cannot tell which way it is going. No diagnosis, no prognosis. No prognosis, no profit.----REMINISCENCES OF A STOCK OPERATOR by Edwin LeFevre

If you can keep your head when all about are losing theirs, perhaps you have misunderstood the situation.  Anonymous (graffiti)

It isn’t as important to buy as cheap as possible as it is to buy at the right time.

Panics do not destroy capital; they merely reveal the extent to which it has been previously destroyed by its betrayal into hopelessly unproductive works.--- John Stuart Mill, 1867

"Anyone who buys or sells a stock, a bond, or a commodity for profit is speculating if he employs intelligent foresight. If he does not, he is gambling." Richard D. Wyckoff

The difference between great people and others is largely a habit — a controlled habit of doing every task better, faster and more efficiently.— William Danforth (Ralston Purina founder)

Don’t buy into certainty, explore the unknown - TradingLounge

You know a country is falling apart when even the government will not accept its own currency.— Jim Rogers (Financier, Adventure Capitalist, b. 1942)

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. -- LeFevre

Good Money Management Alone Is Not Enough

Good Money Management alone isn’t going to increase your edge at all. If your system isn’t any good, you’re still going to lose money, no matter how effective your money management rules are. But if you have an approach that makes money, then money management can make the difference between success and failure. Monroe Trout

The easiest thing to handle is winning, but trading doesn’t start until you lose.

If you lose you are not necessarily a loser, if you call yourself a loser no one will be able to change your mind.

People only accept change when they are faced with necessity, and only recognize necessity when a crisis is upon them. - Jean Monnet

Technical analysis is not a tool used for prediction. It is used to assess the balance of probability in the market. Darryl Guppy.

“There are just four kinds of bets. There are good bets, bad bets, bets that you win, and bets that you lose. Winning a bad bet can be the most dangerous outcome of all, because a success of that kind can encourage you to take more bad bets in the future. You can also lose a good bet, but if you keep placing good bets, over time, the law of averages will be working for you.” –Larry Hite, Trader

Investing is simple, but not easy. Warren Buffett

You have to ask the question, ‘How must you function in order to survive?’ The answer is to be able to accept a loss. Not having expectations makes it a little easier to accept a loss. You must realize that losing is a part of soul growth, so to speak. It’s necessary. It’s hard to accept, but necessary.------LONGSTREET

Not accepting a failure is to not learn from it.