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