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Wisdom Quotes adapted to Trading

2010-12-18

 

Here are some famous quotes adapted to trading.

A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.
Albert Einstein

A trader should look at a chart for what it is, and not for what he want it
to be.

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
Albert Einstein

A trader who has never lost, is not a trader yet.

All men by nature desire knowledge.
Aristotle

All traders by nature desire profitable trades.

Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit.
Aristotle

Trade within your ability and risk tolerance. Increase size and frequency when ability and tolerance permits it.

Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.
Benjamin Franklin

Losing because of a new situation is fine, losing again is the beginning of the end.

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
Benjamin Franklin

The easiest thing to do is prepare. If you don’t, on behalf of the other market participants, we thank you.

Creditors have better memories than debtors.
Benjamin Franklin

You will always remember the trades that could have been and forget about the risks that were involved.

Applause is a receipt, not a bill.
Dale Carnegie

Your trading statement is the receipt, not your spreadsheet.

First ask yourself: What is the worst that can happen? Then prepare to accept it. Then proceed to improve on the worst.
Dale Carnegie

The more you mentally prepare and except loss the less chance it occurs.

A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love.
Friedrich Nietzsche

A trade is a not the girl you want to take home to mother, act accordingly.

After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.
Friedrich Nietzsche

After talking to a guru or anyone with the holy grail, I always take a hot shower, burn the clothes I was wearing, and drink them out of my mind.

Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Focusing on the result (making money), makes winning more fun but less frequent.

Always do whatever’s next.
George Carlin

Move on, understand what happened in the past but do not have an emotional attachment to it.

Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.
George Carlin

Fighting yourself is like robbing your own bank.

A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.
George S. Patton

A trading plan is just words until you act on it.

Always do everything you ask of those you command.
George S. Patton

Educators talk in best practices, if you teach it, do it.

I don’t measure a man’s success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom.
George S. Patton

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

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.
George S. Patton

If every trader is the long there is no money in being long unless you were first.

Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.
George Washington

Don’t marry a trade but if you must make sure you have a prenup.

Experience teaches us that it is much easier to prevent an enemy from posting themselves than it is to dislodge them after they have got possession.
George Washington

Your habits are easily formed but be aware they are hard to pay for.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
Henry David Thoreau

Just because the market is open does not mean you have to trade. Cash is a position too.

All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.
Henry David Thoreau

Your worth as a trader is today’s trading statement, it is re-calculated daily.

All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.
Henry David Thoreau

The trading genius was previously an idiot or is closer to being one tomorrow.

A bore is a person who opens his mouth and puts his feats in it.
Henry Ford

All trading results are insignificant unless it is your last.

Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.
Henry Ford

Having trading discipline is the beginning; keeping discipline is the progress; staying discipline is the success.

Be candid with everyone.
Jack Welch

Be honest with yourself, if or when you fail the change of direction will not kill you.

Change before you have to.
Jack Welch

The market will force you to change if you don’t and it is painful and disheartening.

Control your own destiny or someone else will.
Jack Welch

Put yourself in the best position or you will not have a position come tomorrow.

Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.
Jack Welch

Bend your view to the charts, not the charts to your view.

Even Castles made of sand, fall into the sea, eventually.
Jimi Hendrix

If the base of your trading was built on weak grounds, it is not a matter of if you fail but when you fail.

I try to use my music to move these people to act.
Jimi Hendrix

I place my entries and exits where I am assured people will have to act.

I used to live in a room full of mirrors; all I could see was me.
Jimi Hendrix

You are not the market, but some days you are a part of it.

Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.
John Adams

Trading can be simple if you let it. The stakeholders want to convince you otherwise, making their accomplishment and pocketbooks larger.

In politics the middle way is none at all.
John Adams

Indecision will lead to failure even if it does not result in losing money.

Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.
John F. Kennedy

Any trader can take risk a smart trader can use it to their advantage.

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.
John F. Kennedy

Move past your losing trades don’t erase them.

I don’t think the intelligence reports are all that hot. Some days I get more out of the New York Times.
John F. Kennedy

Understand from whom and why you are getting “hot” tips.

Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.
John Wooden

Losing is lonely, but it can be the easiest way to get to know yourself.

Don’t measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.
John Wooden

If you make money by making a mistake, it is loan with a very high interest rate.

Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.
John Wooden

Losing only matters if you lost because of a lesson you were already taught.

If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?
John Wooden

Develop a plan before you trade or do it later with less cash and more frustration.

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
Karl Marx

A result is rarely an aberration, never treat it as one.

Be content to seem what you really are.
Marcus Aurelius

Find yourself and trade that way.

Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it impossible for anyone to accomplish.
Marcus Aurelius

Because trading seems difficult today, it was not for someone else. Stick with it the roles may reverse tomorrow.

Confine yourself to the present.
Marcus Aurelius

A trade is not connected to another, unless you let.

A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.
Mark Twain

Not accepting a failure is to not learn from it.

A man’s character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.
Mark Twain

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

Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.
Mark Twain

Don’t risk more than you cannot look at positively later.

A lie cannot live.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Eventually you will run out of money if you run from your losses.

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

You may not understand it fully right now but the market is always right.

He who hesitates is poor.
Mel Brooks

If you are thinking about getting out, your competition is already flat.

Always turn a negative situation into a positive situation.
Michael Jordan

A loss is only a loss if you lose the lesson.

I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.
Michael Jordan

The view of trading changes after a loss it is your job to get it back to where it was.

The game is my wife. It demands loyalty and responsibility, and it gives me back fulfillment and peace.
Michael Jordan

If you do not respect the market it will not respect you.

I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.
Mother Teresa

If you understand and accept risk, you will never risk too much again.

If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.
Mother Teresa

It does not matter how successful you were today, it just matters that you were successful.

I realize that some of my anecdotes may appear conflicting but they are not to me. It is not up to me to convince you of their truths. It is your job to figure out how they apply to you.

Investing Like Warren Buffett.

In fact there are a couple of professors in Ohio, who studied any stock that Warren Buffett bought, if you bought on the last day of the month, when it was public that he owned that stock, and you sold it after it was public that he had started selling it, you would have generated north of 20% annual rate of return.

I would say that we will never see another Warren Buffett. Just like we will never see any Albert Einstein or another Mahatma Gandhi. Buffett is a very unique individual. His skillsets outside of investment are phenomenal but they get dwarfed by his investing skills. The main thing that makes Warren Buffett Warren Buffett is that he is a learning machine who has worked really hard for, let’s us say seventy years, and is continuously learning every day.

So the thing is if you want to be like Buffett, there is no short cut. First of all, you have to be deeply interested in investing and you have to be very willing spending tens of hours, hundreds of hours, reading the minutiae. There is a very famous value investor called Seth Klarman. He is into horse racing. And his famous horse is called Read the Footnotes.”

Success and Failure

* If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate – Thomas Watson, Sr.
* I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed – Michael Jordan
* A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him – David Brinkley
* We succeed only as we identify in life, or in war, or in anything else, a single overriding objective, and make all other considerations bend to that one objective – Dwight D. Eisenhower
* What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do – Bob Dylan
* Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts – Winston Churchill
* You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong – Warren Buffett (more…)

Stock Market Rules :There are only two !

2fingersThe stock market has only two rules, both of which are vague and confusing. It is up to you to make them clear and simple to understand.
 Here are the guidelines:
You must write these rules down so that you will not forget them.
You must always follow these rules.
These rules will never change.
You must keep them forever.
These rules are never to be broken.
You must never add to these rules.
 Here are the rules: (more…)

Trading From Your Gut, by Curtis Faith

CHAPTER 1

The Power of the Gut

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”
—Albert Einstein

George Soros, one of the greatest traders alive, trades from the gut. He has widely remarked on the correlation between his backaches and trading choices. In the autobiographical Soros on Soros, he wrote:

 I rely a great deal on animal instincts. When I was actively running the fund, I suffered from backache. I used the onset of acute pain as a signal that there was something wrong in my portfolio. The backache didn’t tell me what was wrong—you know, lower back for short positions, left shoulder for currencies—but it did prompt me to look for something amiss when I might not have done so otherwise.

Some traders might scoff at the idea of making decisions based on “feelings” or intuition. They see the trader’s role as one who remains calm and collected, rationally choosing the right course while those around them are tossed about by their emotions. They believe that Soros is either lying or fooling himself. They don’t see how gut instinct can help. Yet many successful traders feel otherwise. Who is right? Is one approach better than the other?

If you are one of those traders who doesn’t believe that gut instinct or intuition has any place in trading, I invite you to keep an open mind. I, too, once felt as you did. After all, I was trained to take a very systematic and logical approach to trading as a Turtle. I believed that it was important to keep your emotions in check. I ­didn’t believe in trading from the gut.

Trading from your gut is a way of tapping into the extra power of the right hemisphere of the brain.

What I didn’t realize at the time, however, is that there is a big difference between trading emotionally and trading from your gut. Trading emotionally means reacting to fear and hope, which can destroy your trading decisions. Trading from your gut is different. It is a way of tapping into the extra power of the right hemisphere of the brain, which can be a powerful, effective, and entirely rational addition to any trader’s repertoire. (more…)

Einstein's Brain Holds Secrets Of His Extreme Intelligence

A new analysis of photographs of Albert Einstein’s brain has revealed special features that could be what gave him his amazing smarts.

 The researchers compared 14 pictures of Einstein’s brain to 85 brain scans from “normal” people.”Although the overall size and asymmetrical shape of Einstein’s brain were normal, the prefrontal, somatosensory, primary motor, parietal, temporal and occipital cortices were extraordinary,” study researcher Dean, of Florida State University said in a statement. “These may have provided the neurological underpinnings for some of his visuospatial and mathematical abilities, for instance.”

Falk’s findings were published today Nov 16 in the journal Brain. Here are some of the images: (more…)

Einstein's Scribbled Theory On Happiness Sells For $1.6 Million – 195x Highest Expectations

A scribbled note by Albert Einstein which described his theory on the key to happy living was sold at auction in Jerusalem for $1.56m.

According to The Telegraph, the winning bid for the note far exceeded the pre-auction estimate of between $5,000 and $8,000,according to the website of Winner’s auction house.
“It was an all-time record for an auction of a document in Israel,” Winner’s spokesman Meni Chadad told AFP…Bidding in person, online and by phone, started at $2,000. A flurry of offers pushed the price rapidly up for about 20 minutes until the final two potential buyers bid against each other by phone. Applause broke out in the room when the sale was announced.
The newspaper reports that Einstein was on a lecture tour of Japan in 1922 and had recently been awarded the Nobel prize. Einstein didn’t have cash to pay a tip to a bellboy in the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, so he gave him two notes, predicting they would be worth more than a tip. He is reported have said.

 “Maybe if you’re lucky those notes will become much more valuable than just a regular tip.”

The Telegraph continues, Einstein dedicated his life to science, but suggested in the notes that fulfilling a long-term ambition doesn’t necessarily guarantee happiness.
The note said.

“A quiet and modest life brings more joy than a pursuit of success bound with constant unrest.”

The anonymous buyer was from Europe.
The notes were sold by an anonymous Hamburg resident who commented “I am really happy that there are people out there who are still interested in science and history and timeless deliveries in a world which is developing so fast.”
On the second note was written “where there’s a will, there’s a way”. It sold for $240,000.

Time – Space – Reality – Oneness – Markets

What do the above all have in common? That’s right, “nonlinear” concepts!

It is interesting that one of the great minds of humanity, Albert Einstein spent his time on “nonlinear” concepts such as “time, space, reality, and oneness.” I find it more interesting that the interdependence of these “nonlinear” concepts is what makes a market tick as well.

As a trader, “timing” your trade within the “market” is based on “reality” in relation to the “oneness” of other traders and your outcome is determined by the “space” or movement of your position.

It is my opinion based on consulting with many traders that most traders incorrectly view the markets from purely a “linear” mindset and instead should view the markets from a “nonlinear” mindset as the markets are “nonlinear” themselves.  This is why rigid logical thinkers or “linear intellectuals” find trading the markets so frustrating.  Since they operate from their logical “linear” “beta” mind state, and become frustrated when market behavior does not do what it “should.” This is also why I feel that successful trading has to be both “art” & “science.”

Think about how you approach the markets and to what degree you are a “linear” vs. a “nonlinear” mindset. Also try and remember a trade or trading day where it seemed effortless and you just “let-go” and flowed with the market. In days like these, I’ll bet logical thinking was secondary to enjoying yourself, and selecting trades based on both your trading “tools” and your “intuition” which represents trading the markets as an “art” & “science.” Compare that to days when you where frustrated because the market did not do what it was suppose to based solely on logical assumptions.

Usually fear and greed are by products of logical thinking. Fear and greed are emotions and “nonlinear” in concept, but created by “linear” thinking. Isn’t it interesting that fear and greed are present in the markets and are “nonlinear” as well. Or is it because fear and greed are “nonlinear” and that they are present in the markets?

Maybe the key to a good trading system should be based on how to measure or determine “nonlinear” market events such as fear and greed. The purpose of this article is to have you look at the markets from a “nonlinear” point of view so that you can perhaps “see” market relationships that where invisible to you before.

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