The majority of unskilled investors stubbornly hold onto their losses when the losses are small and reasonable. They could get out cheaply, but being emotionally involved and human, they keep waiting and hoping until their loss gets much bigger and costs them dearly.”
William O’Neil
The key to trading success is emotional discipline. If intelligence were the key, there would be a lot more people making money trading… I know this will sound like a cliche, but the single most important reason that people lose money in the financial markets is that they don’t cut their losses short.”
Victor Sperandeo
Some people say, “I can’t sell that stock because I’d be taking a loss.” If the stock is below the price you paid for it, selling doesn’t give you a loss; you already have it.
William O’Neil
When I became a winner I went from ‘I figured it out, therefore it can’t be wrong’ to ‘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.’”
Marty Schwartz
Anxiety is a future oriented emotion. You never will get anxious about events that have already occurred. Suppose we had been anxious about a trade but now it’s over with profit hit or stopped out. We no longer feel anxiety – only feel nothing, or satisfaction, or remorse, or disappointment, or sorrow, or some other past oriented emotion.
What I am saying is, the market is just a bunch of blinking lights on a computer screen. Up or down, good days or bad, your account is just a bunch of numbers. It is not life. It is not who we are. It does not define who we are. As Larry Miller once said, If you are healthy, if you have somebody who loves you, if you are able to get up out of bed in the morning and make your own coffee, the game is over — and you have won.