“The first rule of trading – there are probably many first rules – is don’t get caught in a situation in which you can lose a great deal of money for reasons you don’t understand.” – Bruce Kovner

“The first rule of trading – there are probably many first rules – is don’t get caught in a situation in which you can lose a great deal of money for reasons you don’t understand.” – Bruce Kovner

“When your account has these massive swings up and down, there’s a tendency to feel a rush when the market is going your way and devastation when it’s going against you. These emotions do absolutely nothing to make you a good trader. It’s far better to keep the equity swings manageable and strive for a sense of balance each day, no matter what happens.” – Tom Basso

“The tragedy of life is often not in our failure, but rather in our complacency; not in our doing too much, but rather in our doing too little; not in our living above our ability, but rather in our living below our capacities.” – Benjamin E. Mays

“Don’t worry about what the markets are going to do, worry about what you are going to do in response to the markets.” – Michael Carr

“Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.” – Plato

“The psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer has a simple heuristic. Never ask the doctor what you should do. Ask him what he would do if he were in your place. You would be surprised at the difference” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“The true test of character is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don’t know what to do.” – John Holt

“The scientific spirit is of more value than its products, and irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.” – Thomas Henry Huxley

“I learned how to play poker at a very young age. My father taught me the concept of playing the percentage hands. You don’t just play every hand and stay through every card, because if you do, you will have a much higher probability of losing. You should play the good hands, and drop out of the poor hands, forfeiting the ante. When more of the cards are on the table and you have a very strong hand — in other words, when you feel the percentages are skewed in your favor — you raise and play that hand to the hilt. If you apply the same principles of poker strategy to trading, it increases your odds of winning significantly. I have always tried to keep the concept of patience in mind by waiting for the right trade, just like you wait for the percentage hand in poker. If a trade doesn’t look right, you get out and take a small loss; it’s precisely equivalent to forfeiting the ante by dropping out of a poor hand in poker. On the other hand, when the percentages seem to be strongly in your favor, you should be aggressive and really try to leverage the trade similar to the way you raise on the good hands in poker.” – Gary Bielfeldt
