It is literally true that millions come easier to a trader after he knows how to trade, than hundreds did in the days of his ignorance.
A man must study general conditions, to seize them so as to be able to anticipate probabilities.
Remember this: When you are doing nothing, those speculators who feel they must trade day in and day out, are laying the foundation for your next venture. You will reap benefits from their mistakes.
At long as a stock is acting right, and the market is right, do not be in a hurry to take profits. One should never permit speculative ventures to run into investments.
It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting.
There is time to go long, time to go short and time to go fishing.
One of the most helpful things that anybody can learn is to give up trying to catch the last eighth – or the first. These two are the most expensive eighths in the world. They have cost stock traders, in the aggregate, enough millions of dollars to build a concrete highway across the continent.
When everyone thinks alike, there isn’t much thinking taking place. Get out when you can, not when you have to.
I never hesitate to tell a man that I am bullish or bearish. But I do not tell people to buy or sell any particular stock. In a bear market all stocks go down and in a bull market they go up.
It isn’t a hunch but the subconscious mind, which is the creative mind, at work. That is the mind which makes artists do things without their knowing how they came to do them. Perhaps with me it was the cumulative effect of a lot of little things individually insignificant but collectively powerful.
I know from experience that nobody can give me a tip or a series of tips that will make more money for me than my own judgment.
The market always does what it should do, but not always when.
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. Where I should have made twenty thousand dollars I made two thousand. That was what conservatism did for me.
I was utterly free of speculative prejudices. The bear side doesn’t appeal to me any more than the bull side, or vice versa. My one steadfast prejudice is against being wrong.
There is the plain fool who does the wrong thing at all times anywhere, but there is the Wall Street fool who thinks he must trade all the time.
Ignorance at twenty-two isn’t a structural defect.
Trends come like a series of ocean waves, bringing the high tide when things are good and, as conditions recede, the low tide appears. These trends come unexpectedly, unpredictably, and they have to be weathered with temperance, poise, and patience- good or bad.
The desire for constant action irrespective of underlying conditions is responsible for many losses on Wall Street even among the professionals, who feel that they must take home some money every day, as though they were working for regular wages.
Don’t give me timing, give me time.
If I learned all this so slowly it was because I learned by my mistakes, and some time always elapses between making a mistake and realizing it, and more time between realizing it and exactly determining it.