Nice trading quote

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Iron
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'There's a bank robber (they've got about as much larceny in their hearts as traders) whose stakeout man tells him there's plenty of time to raid the vaults so he begins the chicanery, gleefully picking up the cash he's been hoping for. But, then the lookout beeps to say "the cops are coming."

A bank robber would split, he'd change his plans. That's the difference between traders and bank robbers ... traders would stay in the bank hoping the cop alert was a false signal!'


Larry Williams
switesh
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'...traders would stay in the bank hoping the cop alert was a false signal!'

Haa haa ha...nice one Ferru123
Iron
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“We know that we know almost nothing, but the almost nothing we know isn’t completely nothing and we only bet on that.”

David Harding (hedge fund manager who paid £34 million in tax last year - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/news ... -bill.html)
Iron
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‎"Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for." - Socrates.
switesh
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from Buffett's 1991 letter:

Our motto is:
If at first you do succeed, quit trying.
switesh
Posts: 527
Joined: Mon Jul 11, 2011 8:43 am

The harder you work, the more confidence you get. But you may be working hard on something that is false.
- Charles Munger



This quote hits the spot with my trading.
Iron
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Joined: Fri Dec 11, 2009 10:51 pm

Switesh -

I suspect that most of us have been there...

There is plenty of fools' gold in trading or betting, and it can be easy to be seduced by a method that looks great but in fact has no long term profitability.

“In statistical terms, I figure I have traded about 2 million contracts…with an average profit of $70 per contract. This average profit is approximately 700 standard deviations away from
randomness, a departure that that would occur by chance alone about as frequently as the spare parts in an automotive salvage lot might spontaneously assemble themselves into a McDonald’s restaurant.”

Victor Niederhoffer
The Education of a Speculator (1997)

'For when [Nassim Taleb] looked around him, at the books and the tennis court and the folk art on the walls -- when he contemplated the countless millions that Niederhoffer had made over the years -- he could not escape the thought that it might all have been the result of sheer, dumb luck.'

Malcolm Gladwell

Niederhoffer made countless millions but eventually went bust, btw...

Jeff
switesh wrote:
The harder you work, the more confidence you get. But you may be working hard on something that is false.
- Charles Munger



This quote hits the spot with my trading.
Iron
Posts: 6793
Joined: Fri Dec 11, 2009 10:51 pm

"The biggest secret about success is that there isn't any big secret about it, or if there is, then it's a secret from me, too. The idea of searching for some secret for trading success misses the point. " —Ed Seykota
switesh
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Joined: Mon Jul 11, 2011 8:43 am

October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February.
- Mark Twain
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Euler
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“In medicine, we are discovering the healing powers of fasting, as the avoidance of the hormonal rushes that come with the ingestion of food. Hormones convey information to the different parts of our system, and too much of them confuses our biology. Here again, as with news received at too high a frequency, too much information becomes harmful—daily news and sugar confuse our system in the same manner.”

Nassim Taleb, Antifragile
Iron
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Joined: Fri Dec 11, 2009 10:51 pm

“You must fully understand, strongly believe in, and be totally committed to your trading philosophy. In order to achieve that mental state, you have to do a great deal of independent research. 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
Iron
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"If you have a trading approach that is correct 60% of the time, you will encounter losers on 40% of trades - ignoring commissions and other costs. Your probability of encountering 4 straight losing trades is 40% to the 4th-power - around 2.5%. If you trade frequently, this is bound to occur more than once a year. If you lose close to 10% on each of those 4 occasions, you will need to make 67% on the remaining capital just to return to breakeven." -Kenneth Grant ("Trading Risk")
switesh
Posts: 527
Joined: Mon Jul 11, 2011 8:43 am

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.

- Sir Winston Churchill
Last edited by switesh on Fri Oct 18, 2013 3:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
Iron
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Joined: Fri Dec 11, 2009 10:51 pm

'There are some philosophers who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our self; that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence; and are certain, beyond the evidence of a demonstration, both of its perfect identity and simplicity.... from what impression could this idea be derived?....

For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception.'
David Hume

The relevance to trading? If you view the self as a fiction, then maybe you won't take what happens in the marketplace so personally...
Iron
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Joined: Fri Dec 11, 2009 10:51 pm

"It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing." — Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5)
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