Quotes About Strategy

It's not the power you possess, but using the power of the opposition against itself that changes things. It's called political jujitsu [an Alinsky phrase]. You must go outside the opponent's [Big Boys] experience. You aim the action for the inevitable reaction, knowing that the reaction is more important than your action itself.

Over the years, I have perfected my "just rolled out of bed" style by, more often than not, just rolling out of bed. I've cultivated the look since I've found that ladies like my messy hair—it's an excuse to run their fingers through it. More important, it's yet another component to my whole strategy: nothing works better in a wolf's quest for getting laid than looking like you've just gotten laid.

Have you forgotten God? Here is the advice Moses gave to those seeking his counsel. He knew, that for most problems, the solution lay in surrendering to God. To this day, it's still the sanest strategy.

For her own breakfast she'll project a scheme, Nor take her tea without a strategem.

Life is the game that must be played

The only way I can lose this election is if I'm caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy.

I did precisely the wrong thing. The cotton showed me a loss and I kept it. The wheat showed me a profit and I sold it out. Of all the speculative blunders there are few greater than trying to average a losing game. Always sell what shows you a loss and keep what shows you a profit.

Now, the point is not so much to buy as cheap as possible or go short at top prices, but to buy or sell at the right time.

Experience has taught me that the way a market behaves is an excellent guide for an operator to follow. It is like taking a patient's temperature and pulse or noting the colour of the eye-balls and the coating of the tongue.

I never buy a stock even in a bull market, if it doesn't act as it ought to act in that kind of market.

Experiences had taught me to beware of buying a stock that refuses to follow the group-leader.

That is how I came to learn that even when one is properly bearish at the very beginning of a bear market it is well not to begin selling in bulk until there is no danger of the engine back-firing.

Carefully laid plans will miscarry because the unexpected and even the unexpectable will happen.

I have found an easy way and I stick to it. I simply cannot help making money. I will tell you my secret if you wish. It is this: I never buy at the bottom and I always sell too soon.

Everybody knew that the way to do that was to take profits and buy back your stocks on reactions. And that is precisely what I did, or rather what I tried to do; for I often took profits and waited for a reaction that never came. And I saw my stock go kiting up ten points more and I sitting there with my four-point profit safe in my conservative pocket. They say you never grow poor taking profits. No, you don't. But neither do you grow rich taking a four-point profit in a bull market.

Observation, experience, memory and mathematics -- these are what the successful trader must depend on.

A stock which it is desired to distribute should be manipulated to the highest possible point and then sold.

It's the guessing that develops a man's brain power. Just consider what you have to do to guess right.

Addison G. Jerome was the acknowledged king of the Public Board in the spring of 1863. His market tips, they tell me, were considered as good as cash in bank. From all accounts he was a great trader and made millions.

They say you never grow poor taking profits. No, you don't. But neither do you grow rich taking a four-point profit in a bull market.

But you don't sell in bulk on the advance. You can't. The big selling is done on the way down from the top.

There is no sense in marking up the price to a very high level if you cannot induce the public to take it off your hands later. Whenever inexperienced manipulators try to unload at the top and fail, old-timers look mighty wise and tell you that you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink.

There are dreamers and there are planners; the planners make their dreams come true.

Men without an organized system of thought will always be at the mercy of men who have one.