Quotes from Jack D. Schwager

When I see a picture like the 1861 cotton market, I ask myself, "What caused that? Why did that happen?" Then I try to figure it out. From that, you learn an enormous amount. In

My goal on Wall Street was never to get rich but to stay in business. There's a big difference. If you're out of the business, you can never get rich. That's why you have to be especially cautious when you're trading a larger position size.

I am always thinking about losing money as opposed to making money.

When asked what he thought the average trader did wrong, Tom Baldwin, who in the days before electronic trading was the largest individual trader in the Treasury bond pit, replied, "They trade too much. They don't pick their spots selectively enough.

What can a losing trader do to transform himself into a winning trader? A losing trader can do little to transform himself into a winning trader. A losing trader is not going to want to transform himself. That's the kind of thing winning traders do.

you have enough monkeys randomly striking keyboard keys (they have recently traded in their typewriters for PCs), one of them will eventually type Hamlet

strong opinions, weakly held.

Excellence and achievement have a structure that can be copied. By modeling successful people, we can learn from the experience of those who have already succeeded.

Indeed, I have found that confidence is one of the most consistent traits exhibited by the successful traders I have interviewed.

Even a poor trading system could make money with good money management.

Kovner lists risk management as the key to successful trading; he always decides on an exit point before he puts on a trade. He also stresses the need for evaluating risk on a portfolio basis rather than viewing the risk of each trade independently. This is absolutely critical when one holds positions that are highly correlated, since the overall portfolio risk is likely to be much greater than the trader realizes.

There is no single market secret to discover, no single correct way to trade the markets. Those seeking the one true answer to the markets haven't even gotten as far as asking the right question, let alone getting the right answer.

Investors often make the mistake of equating manager performance in a given year with manager skill. In some instances, more skilled managers will underperform because they refuse to participate in market bubbles. In fact, during market bubbles, the best performers are often the most imprudent rather than the most skilled managers.

Debussy's quote that "Music is the space between the notes," because an analogous statement about trading—Trading is the space between trades—is so strikingly apropos.

But the fact is: The people who are really successful in trading are tremendously hard workers.

trend line penetrations often prove to be false signals.

If I try to teach you what I do, you will fail because you are not me. If you hang around me, you will observe what I do, and you may pick up some good habits. But there are a lot of things you will want to do differently. Colm O'Shea

I feel my success comes from my love of the markets. I am not a casual trader. It is my life. I have a passion for trading. It is not merely a hobby or even a career choice for me. There is no question that this is what I am supposed to do with my life.

Excessive worrying about taxes usually leads to unsound investments in the hope of achieving a tax shelter.

The idea that trading success is tied to finding some specific ideal approach is misguided. There is no single correct methodology.

Generals always fight the last war

relationships. For example, if the S&P was moving in an inverse lockstep to the bonds, and bonds were down for the day, but the S&P was not responding on the upside, it would tell me I should sell the S&P.

Coming back again to the investment bank world, they have meetings and all sorts of stuff going on that suck up time. Traders would all complain about the waste of time, but what it actually meant was that it limited the amount of time they were in front of their screens staring at their positions. You don't want to be sitting in front of your screen and staring at market prices for 12 hours a day. Staring at the price is not going to tell you very much.

I succeeded because I didn't know that I couldn't.