Here are some noteworthy quotes from the 80′s (yes 80′s) PBS special “Trader“, highlighting Paul Tudor Jones and his partner Peter Borish’s trading strategies. I’d like to thank Rodrigo for sending me this special, as I wasn’t familiar with Jone’s career. Even after a decade in the business you can still keep learning from successful traders in the hopes of fine tuning one’s craft.

What I found refreshing about Jones is his commitment to helping underprivileged high school students and his pledge to pay for their college education as long as they complete high school. And more importantly, the giving of his time each and every week to intervene in their lives.

“If life ever ceases to be an educational experience, I probably wouldn’t get out of bed.”

When the headlines are extremely negative day after day and the market refuses to go down, it’s “telling a different story than what the headlines are.” When the markets sell off in the morning and are bought up in the afternoon, it’s a sign of quite accumulation.

“After awhile size means nothing. It gets back to whether you’re making 100% rate of return on 10k or 100 million dollars. It doesn’t make any difference.”

“Trading requires an energy level, and it’s very difficult to sustain it 24 hrs a day, which is what this requires. To do the job right requires such an enormous amount of concentration that you’ve got to be able to…it’s physical and emotionally mandatory to find some time to relax, and you’ve got to be able to turn it off like that.”

“The whole world is simply nothing more than a flow chart for capital.” (more…)