Originally Posted by nina

Hi!

As today is Sunday, I thought it'd be a nice idea to post some "quoting" of well known traders:

Victor Sperandeo
Famously known as Wall Street's "Trader Vic"
The key to trading success is emotional discipline. If intelligence were the key, there would be a lot more people making money trading.


Bruce Kovner
Has earned as much as $300 million in one year from trading

Place your stops at a point that, if reached, will reasonably indicate that the trade is wrong, not at a point determined primarily by the maximum dollar amount you are willing to lose. If you personalize losses, you can't trade.

Jack D Schwager
Author "The New Market Wizards"
Winning streaks lead to complacency, and complacency leads to sloppy trading.

Richard Dennis
Turned $400 into $200 million trading futures
When things go bad, traders shouldn't stick their head in the sand and just hope it gets better. You should always have a worst-case point. The only choice should be to get out quicker. The worst mistake a trader can make is to miss a major profit opportunity. 95 percent of profits come from only 5 percent of the trades.


Bernard Baruch
Show me the charts, and I'll tell you the news. Have an opinion on what the market should do but don't decide what the market will do. Be happy with a percentage of the move.

Paul Tudor Jones
Turned $1.5 million into $300 million in five years

If you have a losing position that is making you uncomfortable, the solution is very simple: Get out, because you can always get back in. There is nothing better than a fresh start. The most important rule of trading is to play great defense, not great offense.
Every day I assume every position I have is wrong. I know where my stop risk points are going to be. I do that so I can define my maximum possible draw down. Hopefully, I spend the rest of the day enjoying positions that are going in my direction. If they are going against me, then I have a game plan for getting out. Don't be a hero. Don't have an ego. Always question yourself and your ability. Don't ever feel that you are very good. The second you do, you are dead. I know that to be successful, I have to be frightened. Don't focus on making money; focus on protecting what you have.

Gary Bielfeldt

The most important is discipline - I am sure everyone says that. Second, you have to have patience; if you have a good trade on, you have to be able to stay with it. Third, you need courage to go into the market, and courage comes from adequate capitalization. Fourth, you must have a willingness to lose; that is also related to adequate capitalization. Fifth, you need a strong desire to win. You have to have the attitude that if a trade loses, you can handle it without any problem and come back to do the next trade. You can't let a losing trade get to you emotionally. If a trade doesn't look right, I get out and take a small loss.


Ed Seykota
Achieved 250,000% return over 16 years of trading
If you can't take a small loss, sooner or later you will take the mother of all losses. There are old traders and there are bold traders, but there are very few old, bold traders. Dramatic and emotional trading experiences tend to be negative. Pride is a great banana peel, as are hope, fear, and greed. My biggest slip-ups occurred shortly after I got emotionally involved with positions. I prefer not to dwell on past situations. I tend to cut bad trades as soon as possible, forget them, and then move on to new opportunities. The elements of good trading are: 1. Cutting losses, 2. Cutting losses, and 3. Cutting losses. If you can follow these three rules, you may have a chance. Trying to trade during a losing streak is emotionally devastating. Trying to play "catch up" is lethal. I set protective stops at the same time I enter a trade. I normally move these stops in to lock in a profit as the trend continues. One evening, while having dinner with a fundamentalist, I accidentally knocked a sharp knife off the edge of the table. He watched the knife twirl through the air, as it came to rest with the pointed end sticking into his shoe. "Why didn't you move your foot?" I exclaimed. "I was waiting for it to come back up," he replied. Losing a position is aggravating, whereas losing your nerve is devastating. I intend to risk below 5 percent on a trade, allowing for poor executions. The trading rules I live by are: 1. Cut losses. 2. Ride winners. 3. Keep bets small. 4. Follow the rules without question. 5. Know when to break the rules. Be sensitive to subtle differences between 'intuition' and 'into wishing'. Everybody gets what they want out of the market. "The "aha!" process lies at the heart of price change. For instance, consider the series: OTTFFSSE. What is the next letter? This puzzle creates tension - until you see the first letters of the ordinal numbers - one, two. "Aha!" you say. A lot happens during an "aha." The puzzle dies and the tension dissipates. A societal "aha!" drives price. Read the newspapers and the news magazines during a major move. At first, no one gets why the move is happening. There's a lot of confusion. Part of the move's way up, some people get it. At the end, everybody gets it. The tension is resolved and the move ends."


Larry Hite
Turned a $2 million managed account into $800 million in 8 years

I have two basic rules about winning in trading as well as in life: 1. If you don't bet, you can't win. 2. If you lose all your chips, you can't bet. Frankly, I don't see markets. I see risks, rewards, and money.


William O'Neil
Turned $5,000 into $200,000 in 1962 with 3 consecutive trades

Some investors have trouble making decisions to buy or sell. In other words, they vacillate and can't make up their minds. They are unsure because they really don't know what they are doing. They do not have a plan, a set of principles, or rules to guide them and, therefore, are uncertain of what they should be doing.


Tom Baldwin
Started trading with $25,000, now trades up to $2 billion worth of T-bond futures a day
The best traders have no ego. To be a great trader, you have to have a big enough ego in the sense that you have confidence in yourself. You cannot let ego get in the way of a trade that is a loser; you have to swallow your pride and get out.


That's all Folks!!!

Nina