“You learn to distinguish the good traders from the bad, the successful techniques from the unsuccessful, and the good habits from the faulty. You also learn to distinguish the lover from the fighter, the winners from the losers, the serious from the frivolous, the cerebral from the superficial, and the friend from the foe. But above all, you learn that the psychological makeup of the trader is the single most critical element of success.” – Leo Melamed
“Every trader knows that market truth and practice are visceral, not cerebral. Market wisdom, like Samurai truth, is practical truth that can only be utilized and realized in action. It can never reside on the level of mere theory.” – Robert Koppel, Tao of Trading
“Markets are the perfect non-biased teachers of self-reflection and discipline. A survival rate has less to do with war and more to do with the preparation of war’s outcome.”
-Jeremy Lyter
“Most traders don’t have a winning strategy. Even among those 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.” – Gil Blake
“People want to buy cheap and sell dear; this by itself makes them countertrend. But the notion of cheapness or dearness must be anchored to something. People tend to view the prices they’re used to as normal and prices removed from these levels as aberrant. This perpective leads people to trade counter to an emerging trend on the assumption that prices will eventually return to “normal”. Therein lies the path to disaster.” – William Eckhardt
“Opportunities change, strategies change, but people and psychology do not change. If trend-following systems don’t work well, something else will. There’s always money being lost, so someone out there has to win. ” – Gil Blake
“My sense of insecurity keeps me alert, always ready to correct my errors.” – George Soros
“A trading philosophy is something that cannot just be transferred from one person to another; it’s something that you have to acquire yourself through time and effort.”
– Richard Driehaus
“Lawyers, doctors, engineers and professional men who make a success spend anywhere from two to five years’ time studying and preparing to practice their profession before they begin making any money. Men enter into speculation in Wall Street without any preparation. They have made no study of it whatsoever. They try to deal in something they know nothing about. Is it any wonder then that they lose? Speculators and investors who simply guess, follow tips, rumors, newspaper talk and so-called “inside information” have no chance of ever making a success.” -William D. Gann 1923
“You should try to express your enthusiasm and ingenuity by doing research at night, not by overriding your system during the day. Overriding is something you should do only in unexpected circumstances – and then only with great forethought. If you find yourself overriding routinely, it’s a sure sign that there’s something that you want in the system that hasn’t been included.” – William Eckhardt
“The good traders are the ones who can hold their ground the majority of the month and participate in that small handful of trades that are windfalls. The real skill is in not LOSING money!” – Linda Bradford Raschke
“When you are in a losing streak, your ability to properly assimilate and analyze information starts to become distorted because of the impairment of the confidence factor, which is a by-product of a losing streak. You have to work very hard to restore that confidence, and cutting back trading helps achieve that goal.” – Bill Lipschutz
“If most traders would learn to sit on their hands 50 per cent of the time, they would make a lot more money.” – Bill Lipschutz
“True Trading Mastery derives from understanding the relatively small role technical analytical factors play in the overall trading process and the inestimatably important role that correct market attitudes and beliefs exert in facilitating a consistently profitable result.” – Bob Koppel
“The best fertilizer is the farmer’s shadow. This adage applies equally well to trading as it does to farming. Trading profits are cultivated in the rich soil of market discipline, strict money management and consistent adherance to a proven trading strategy.” – Howard Abell
“Some of the most useful and profound trading maxims are asininely simple, which is why people who are over-analytical often have a hard time being successful in this business.” – Johnnie T-Bond
