Weekend -Trading Quotes

Trading Journal

Show me a trader with good records, and I’ll show you a good trader.”

– Dr. Alexander Elder


“The fruits of your trading or investment success will be in direct ratio to the honesty and sincerity of your own effort in keeping your own records, doing your own thinking, and reaching your own conclusions. You cannot wisely read a book on ‘ how to keep fit’ and leave the physical exercise to another. “

– Jesse Livermore


Risk Management

“Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.”

– Warren Buffet

 

Money Management

“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.”

– George Soros


“If you have an approach that makes money, then money management can make the difference between success and failure… … I try to be conservative in my risk management. I want to make sure I’ll be around to play tomorrow. Risk control is essential. “

– Monroe Trout


“Every winner needs to master three essential components of trading; a sound individual psychology, a logical trading system and good money management. These essentials are like three legs of a stool – remove one and the stool will fall, together with the person who sits on it. Losers try to build a stool with only one leg, or two at the most. They usually focus exclusively on trading systems. Your trades must be based on clearly defined rules. You have to analyze your feelings as you trade, to make sure that your decisions are intellectually sound. You have to structure your money management so that no string of losses can kick you out of the game.”

– Dr. Alexander Elder


“The most important advice is to never let a loser get out of hand. You want to be sure that you can be wrong twenty or thirty times in a row and still have money in your account. When I trade, I’ll risk perhaps 5 to 10 percent of the money in my account. If I lose on that trade, no matter how strongly I feel, on my next trade I’ll risk no more than about 4 percent of my account. If I lose again, I’ll drop the trading size down to about 2 percent. I’ll keep on reducing my trading size as long as I’m losing. I’ve gone from trading as many as three thousand contracts per trade to as few as ten. “

– Randy McKay


“All traders make mistakes, great traders, however, limit the damage.”

– Unknown


“My trading style blends both the risk-oriented and conservative personality of my personality. I take the risk-oriented part of my personality and put it where it belongs to : trading. And, I take the conservative part of my personality and put it where it belongs to money management. My money management techniques are extremely conservative. I never risk anything approaching the total amount of money in my account, let alone my total funds. “

– Randy McKay


“I’m more concerned about controlling the downside. Learn to take the losses. The most important thing about making money is not to let your losses get out of hand. “

– Marty Schwartz


“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

 

Edge

“To succeed as a trader, it is absolutely necessary to have an edge. You can’t win without an edge, even with the world’s greatest discipline and money management skills. If you don’t have an edge, all that money management and discipline will do for you is to guarantee that you will gradually bleed to death. Incidentally, if you don’t know what your edge is, you don’t have one. “

– Jack Schwager


“Make sure that you have the edge. Know what your edge is and employ rigid risk control rules. Basically, when you get down to it, to make money, you need to have an edge and employ good money management. 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

 

Technicals

“We use technical analysis not because we think it means something, but because other people think it means something. We are always looking for market participants to take us out of a trade, and in that sense, knowing the technical points at which people are likely to be buying or selling is helpful”

– Michael Masters

 

Fundamentals

“A great company could be a terrible investment if its price has already more than discounted the bullish fundamentals. Conversely, a company that has been experiencing problems and is the subject of negative news could be a great investment if its price decline has more than discounted the bearish information. Fundamentals are not bullish or bearish in a vacuum, they are bullish or bearish only relative to price. “

– Jack Schwager

 

Trading Systems

“Don’t worry about what the markets are going to do, worry about what you are going to do in response to the markets.”

– Unknown


“I believe that systems tend to be more useful or successful for the originator than for someone else. It’s more important that an approach be personalized: otherwise, you won’t have the confidence to follow it. It’s unlikely that someone else’s approach will be consistent with your own personality. It’s also possible that individuals who become successful traders are not the type to use someone else’s approach and that successful traders don’t sell their systems “

– Gill Blake


Discipline

“Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.”

– Warren Buffet


“Most of traders lose because they don’t have a winning strategy. Apart from this even among those traders who do, many don’t follow their strategy. Trading puts pressure on weaker human traits and seems to seek out each individual’s Achilles’ heel. “

– Gill Blake


“The ability to change one’s mind is probably a key characteristic of successful traders. Dogmatic and rigid personalities rarely succeed in markets. The markets are a dynamic process and sustained trading success requires the ability to modify and even change strategies as markets evolve. Successful traders have the ability to adapt to the changing dynamics of the market and in the process maintain their consistency of performance. “

– Gill Blake


“Do your own thing (independence) and do the right thing (discipline)”

– Unknown


“Successful speculation implies taking risks when the odds are in your favour”

– Unknown


“Don’t force trades. Do not attempt to create an opportunity where one does not exist. Be patient.”

– Unknown


“The best traders have no ego. You have to swallow your pride and get out of the losses. “

– Tom Baldwin


“Being right is more important than being a genius. I think one reason why so many people try to pick tops and bottoms is that they want to prove to the world how smart they are. Think about winning rather than being a hero. Forget trying to judge trading success by how close you can come to picking major tops and bottoms, but rather by how well you can pick individual trades with merit based on favourable risk / return situations and a good percentage of winners. Go for consistency on a trade-to-trade basis, not perfect trades.”

– Jack Schwager


Psychology

“Formula for Success – A Few new disciplines practised every day. “

– Jim Rohn


“You can be free. You can live and work anywhere in the world. You can be independent from routine and not answer to anybody. This is the life of a successful trader. Many aspire to this but few succeed. An amateur looks at a quote screen and sees millions of dollars sparkle in front of his face. He reaches for the money – and loses. He reaches again – and loses more. Traders lose because the game is hard, or out of ignorance, or lack of discipline or because of both. “

– Dr. Alexander Elder


“Markets offer unlimited opportunities for self-sabotage, as well as for self-fulfillment. Acting out your internal conflicts in the marketplace is an expensive proposition. Traders who are not at peace with themselves often try to fulfill their contradictory wishes in their market. If you do not know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere you never wanted to be. You can succeed in trading only if you can handle it as a serious intellectual pursuit. Emotional trading is lethal. To help ensure success, practice defensive money management. A good trader watches his or her capital as successfully as a professional scuba-diver watches his or her air supply. “

– Dr. Alexander Elder


“Most often, traders have four fears. There’s the fear of being wrong, the fear of losing money, the fear of missing out and the fear of leaving money on the table. I found that basically, those four fears accounted for probably 90% to 95% of the trading errors that we make. Let’s put it this way: If you can recognize opportunity, what’s going to prevent you from executing your trades properly? Your fear. Your fears immobilize you. Your fears distort your perception of market information in ways that don’t allow you to utilize what you know. “

– Mark Douglas


“We know that the random element in the market represents at least 40 to 60 percent activity. Therefore, it’s not logical to look at every tick or to think that every tick or every chart formation has meaning. They don’t. There are too many traders trying to look at the markets from too stringent an analytical viewpoint. Most of what happens in the markets is meaningless. Why try to interpret every little movement, every little reversal, every little tick? In trying to do too much, they’re actually paying too much attention to the market. You have to keep a distance from the market. Only then will you have the psychological resources to let your profits ride. You won’t be looking at every tick and interpreting it in a fearful way.”

– Jake Bernstein


“I believe that to be a good trader it’s very important to be rational and have your emotions under control. I’ve been trying for years to get rid of anger completely when I completely lose money, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it is impossible. I can work towards that goal, but until the day I die, I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to look a big loss in the face and not get angry. “

– Monroe Trout


“Being wrong is acceptable. But staying wrong is totally unacceptable. Being wrong isn’t a choice, but staying wrong is. To play any game successfully, you have to have some skill, an edge, but beyond that it is money management. Good traders manage the downside; they don’t worry the upside. “

– Mark Minnervini


“To be a successful trader, you have to be able to admit mistakes. People who are very bright don’t make very many mistakes. In a sense, they generally are correct. In trading, however, the person who can easily admit to being wrong is the one who walks away a winner. Besides trading, there is probably no other profession where you have to admit you’re wrong. In trading, you can’t hide your failures. Your equity provides a daily reflection of your performance. The trader who tries to blame his losses on external events will never learn from his mistakes. For a trader, rationalization is a guaranteed road to ultimate failure. “

– Victor Sperandeo


“Since most small to moderate profits tend to vanish, the market teaches you to cash them in before they get away. Since the market spends more time in consolidations than in trends, it teaches you to buy dips and sell rallies. Since the market trades through the same prices again and again and seems, if only you wait long enough to return to prices it has visited before, it teaches you to hold on to bad trades. The market likes to lull you into 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.”

– William Eckhardt


“The essential element is that the markets are ultimately based on human psychology, and by charting the markets you’re merely converting human psychology into graphic representations. I believe that the human mind is more powerful than any computer in analyzing the implications of this graph. “

– Al Weiss


Education

“Opportunity comes often. It knocks as often as you have a trained ear to hear it, an eye trained to see it, a hand trained to grasp it, and a head trained to use it. “

– Warren Buffet


“Most aspiring traders underestimate the time, work, and money required to become successful. To succeed as a trader, one needs complete commitment. Just as in any entrepreneurial venture, you must have a solid business plan, adequate financing, and a willingness to work long hours. Those seeking shortcuts are doomed to failure. And even if you do everything right, you should still expect to, lose money during the first five years – losses that I view as tuition payments to be made to the school of trading. These are cold, hard facts that many would-be traders prefer not to hear or believe, but ignoring them doesn’t change the reality”

– Mark D. Cook


“Each trading failure is a sign that you are doing something wrong; it is not necessarily a good predictor of ultimate potential failure or success.”

– Unknown


“Don’t get caught in a situation in which you can lose a great deal of money for reasons you don’t understand.”

– Unknown


“My advice to new entrants to stock market is to approach it only with the help of professional advisors. Otherwise stay out of the business and stay completely away from the market. For novices to come in and try to generate profit in this incredibly complex industry is like me trying to do brain surgery on the weekends to pick up a little extra cash. “

– Mark Ritchie


“People underestimate the time it takes to succeed as a trader. Some people come here and think they can sit with me for a week and become great traders. How many people when they went to college would’ve thought to walk up to the professor and say, I know the course is for a semester, but I think a week should be enough for me to get it. Gaining proficiency is the same in trading as in any other profession – it requires experience, and experience takes time. “

– Mark D Cook