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4 Quotes from Michael Marcus

You have to learn how to lose; it is more important than learning how to win. If you think you are always going to be a winner, when you lose, you will develop feelings of hostility and end up blaming the market instead of trying to learn why you lost.

If trading is your life , it is a torturous kind of excitement. But if you are keeping your life in balance, then it is fun. All the successful traders I’ve seen that lasted in the business sooner or later got to that point. They have a balanced life; they have fun outside of trading. You can’t sustain it if you don’t have some other focus. Eventually, you wind up over trading or getting excessively disturbed about temporary failures.

I think the leading cause of financial disablement is the belief that you can rely on the experts to help you. It might, if you know the right expert….Typically, however, these so-called “experts” are not traders. Your average broker couldn’t be a trader in a million years. More money is lost listening to brokers than any other way. Trading requires an intense personal involvement. You have to do your own homework, and that is what I advise people to do.

Perhaps the most important rule is to hold on to your winners and cut your losers. Both are equally important. If you don’t stay with your winners, you are not going to be able to pay the losers.
You also have to follow your own light. Because I have so many friends who are talented traders, I often have to remind myself that if I try to trade their way, or on their ideas, I am going to lose. Every trader has strengths and weakness. Some are good holders of winners, but may hold their losers a little too long. Others may cut their winners a little short, but are quick to take their losses. As long as you stick to your own style, you get the good and bad in your own approach. When you try to incorporate someine else’s style, you often wind up with the worst of both styles. I’ve done that a lot.

5 Trading Thoughts


 Gut feel is very important. 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.

 If trading is your life, it is a tortuous kind of excitement. But if you are keeping your life in balance, then it is fun. All the successful traders have a balanced life; they have fun outside of trading.

The first rule of trading is that don’t get caught in a situation in which you can lose a great deal of money for reasons you don’t understand.

Place your stops at a point that, if reached, will reasonably indicate that the trade is wrong, not at a point determined primarily by the maximum dollar amount you are will to lose per contract.

A common mistake is to think of the market as a personal nemesis. The market, of course, is totally impersonal; it doesn’t care whether you make money or not.