Turning Points

Volatility is greatest at turning points, diminishing as a new trend becomes established.---George Soros

Getting Better

These are both very, very healthy. Studies (see Waitzkin, Art of Learning) have shown that learners who learn for the sake of getting better continue to learn and progress but that when a learner focuses on winning, they become fragile, eventually reaching a place where they stop improving because they are afraid of losing.

Strength

Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.----Arnold Schwarzenegger,

Never Argue

Remember, the market is designed to fool most of the people most of the time. Sometimes, the market will go contrary to what speculators have predicted. At these times, speculators must abandon their predictions and follow the action of the market. Never argue with the tape. Markets are never wrong, but opinions often are. I only try to react to what the market is telling me by its behavior.------Jesse Livermore

Market

The stock market is a voting machine in the short run and a weighing machine in the long run. - Benjamin Graham

Short

He who sells what isn't his'n; Must buy it back or go to prison. - Daniel Drew, who ironically lost the bulk of his fortune in 1870 when his short-selling campaign in the Erie Railroad went horribly wrong.

Psychology

The qualities essential to the equipment of a speculator are judgment, self-reliance, courage, prudence and pliability. To these could be added another quality, patience.”----Dickson G. Watts,

Wyckoff concluded: “If you do not possess courage, self-reliance, patience, prudence and pliability, cultivate those qualities. . . . You must train yourself . . . make a searching analysis of your own mental process.”

Volume

Is it volume which causes price changes, or do price changes cause volume—the hen or the egg, which came first?—H. M. Gartley, Profits in the Stock Market (Miami, FL: Lambert-Gann Publishers, 1935)

Limits

A really important hurdle to becoming a complete trader is learning to identify and accept your own limits. There are limits to how frequently you should trade, how much money you should place at risk, how many different stocks or commodities you should invest in, how many technical indicators you should use, and so on.---Hank Pruden

Study Your Mistakes

I have always found it profitable to study my mistakes. Thus I eventually discovered that it was all very well not to lose your bear position in a bear market, but that at all times the tape should be read to determine the propitiousness of the time for operating. If you begin right you will not see your profitable position seriously menaced; and then you will find no trouble in sitting tight.----REMINISCENCES OF A STOCK OPERATOR by Edwin LeFevre

Nothing

Wall Street people learn nothing and forget everything.-----Benjamin Graham

Confidence

Optimism means expecting the best, but confidence means knowing how to handle the worst.----Max Gunther

Confirm

If you believe it likely to have a difinite bullish or beariish effect marketwise, do not back your judgement" UNTIL THE ACTION OF THE MARKET ITSELF CONFIRMS YOUR OPINION"----The Disciplined Trader,Mark Douglas

Hope

When I have to depend upon hope in a trade, I get out of it.
— Jesse Livermore

Edge

To be a super-trader, you'll need an edge to overcome the laws of probability and the uncertainty of the marketplace. That edge comes from information flow, the ability to correct your habits in terms of the market's characteristics, and being able to take risks, cut losses, expand your information network, ferret out ideas, and take recommendations.----Trading to Win, Ari Kiev

Courage

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.----Anais Nin

Understanding Yourself

There are no certainties in this investment world, and where there are no certainties, you should begin by understanding yourself.—James L. Fraser

Consequences

In nature there are no rewards or punishments; there are consequences.
— Horace Annesley Vachell (The Face of Clay, 1861-1955)

Black Swan

What we call here a Black Swan (and capitalize it) is an event with the following three attributes.First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.--- Nicholas Nassim Taleb

Freedom To Create

I learned that the markets offer the trader an opportunity to profit from price movement, and these opportunities are basically in perpetual motion. It is an environment where the individual has the freedom to create his own results, unimpeded by many of the constraints that exist in everyday social life. These never ending opportunities make the market a perfect mirror of the trader's attitude. What the trader sees in that movement and what he can do about it the markets have no control over. All the choices and all the power to turn these choices into experience reside in the mind of each trader.----The Disciplined Trader,Mark Douglas

Panics

Panics do not destroy capital; they merely reveal the extent to which it has been previously destroyed by its betrayal into hopelessly unproductive works.--- John Stuart Mill, 1867

Being Wrong

Contrary to what 99 percent of the investment population thinks, trading is not about being right. Being right is easy. Trading is about being wrong; and navigating this inevitable occurrence distinguishes the winners from the losers in the long run.--Jeff deGraaf

Trading To Win

"Trading to win" means surrendering to the moment without trying to control it. It means to let go of fixed preconceptions about what you must do, and to liberate your self-conscious sense of self and selfprotective thoughts, which color the way you experience life and the market. When you can do this, you are in the here and now of your trading, and can bring your maximum potential to bear on the tasks before you.----Trading to Win, Ari Kiev

Mad In Crowds

Men go mad in crowds, but come to their senses slowly, and one by one.----Charles Mackay

Limit

I think it's much too early to tell.I think all we are learned is what we already knew, is that stocks have become like commodities, regrettably, and they go up to limit and they go down to limit.And we are also known over the years that when they go down, they go down faster than they go up.----Leon Cooperman