Jack D. Schwager > Quotes

“There are a million ways to make money in the markets. The irony is that they are all very difficult to find.”
― Jack D. Schwager

“Michael Jordan didn’t become a great basketball player because he wanted to do product endorsements. Van Gogh didn’t become a great painter because he dreamed that one day his paintings would sell for $50 million.”
― Jack D. Schwager, Stock Market Wizards: Interviews with America's Top Stock Traders

“Being wrong is acceptable, but staying wrong is totally unacceptable.”
― Jack D. Schwager, Stock Market Wizards: Interviews with America's Top Stock Traders

“Make the calls. Maybe they won’t talk to you, but I guarantee that if you don’t call, they won’t talk to you.”
― Jack D. Schwager, Stock Market Wizards: Interviews with America's Top Stock Traders

“Actually, the best traders have no ego.”
― Jack D. Schwager, Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders

“One of my favorite patterns is the tendency for the markets to move from relative lows to relative highs and vice versa every two to four days. This pattern is a function of human behavior. It takes several days of a market rallying before it looks really good. That’s when everyone wants to buy it, and that’s the time when the professionals, like myself, are selling. Conversely, when the market has been down for a few days, and everyone is bearish, that’s the time I like to be buying.”
― Jack D. Schwager, The New Market Wizards: Conversations with America's Top Traders

“Another way to determine the direction of the general market is to focus on how the leading stocks are performing. If the stocks that have been leading the bull market start breaking down, that is a major sign the market has topped. Another important factor to watch is the Federal Reserve discount rate. Usually, after the Fed raises the rate two or three times, the market runs into trouble.”
― Jack D. Schwager, Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders

“You just stay focused on what you have to do. Exactly.”
― Jack D. Schwager, The New Market Wizards: Conversations with America's Top Traders

“If instead of saying, “I’m going to do this trade,” you say, “I’m going to watch myself do this trade,” all of a sudden you find that the process is a lot easier.”
― Jack D. Schwager, The New Market Wizards: Conversations with America's Top Traders

“Traders focus almost entirely on where to enter a trade. In reality, the entry size is often more important than the entry price”
― Jack D. Schwager, Hedge Fund Market Wizards: How Winning Traders Win

“If you don’t stay with your winners, you are not going to be able to pay for the losers.”
― Jack D. Schwager, Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders

“I discovered that you can’t train people how to trade by just imparting knowledge. The key to trading success is emotional discipline. Making money has nothing to do with intelligence. Think of all the bright people that choose careers on Wall Street. If intelligence were the key, there would be a lot more people making money trading.”
― Jack D. Schwager, The New Market Wizards: Conversations with America's Top Traders

“hold on to your winners and cut your losers.”
― Jack D. Schwager, Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders

“Either go at it full force or don’t go at it at all. Don’t dabble.”
― Jack D. Schwager, Stock Market Wizards: Interviews with America's Top Stock Traders

“Can you give me an example of how the lack of real world experience would hurt the researcher?”
― Jack D. Schwager, Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders

“One of my rules was to get out when the volatility and the momentum became absolutely insane.”
― Jack D. Schwager, Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders

“Buffett being penalized for underperforming versus managers riding the long side of the dot-com bubble is a perfect illustration of a common investor mistake—failing to realize that often the managers with the highest returns achieve those results because they’re taking the most risk, not because they have the greatest skill.”
― Jack D. Schwager, Hedge Fund Market Wizards: How Winning Traders Win

“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.”
― Jack D. Schwager, The New Market Wizards: Conversations with America's Top Traders

“In trading, 80 percent of your profits come from 20 percent of your ideas.”
― Jack D. Schwager, The Little Book of Market Wizards: Lessons from the Greatest Traders

“Failure Is Not Predictive”
― Jack D. Schwager, The Little Book of Market Wizards: Lessons from the Greatest Traders

“But the fact is: The people who are really successful in trading are tremendously hard workers.”
― Jack D. Schwager, The Little Book of Market Wizards: Lessons from the Greatest Traders

“traders shouldn’t stick their heads in the sand and just hope it gets better.”
― Jack D. Schwager, Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders

“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”
― Jack D. Schwager, Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders

“I figured out that for every dollar I made trading, 30 percent was going to the government, 30 percent was going to support my planes, and 20 percent was going to support my real estate. So I finally decided to sell everything.”
― Jack D. Schwager, Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders

“You don’t want to have a position before a move has started. You want to wait until the move is already under way before you get into the market.”
― Jack D. Schwager, The New Market Wizards: Conversations with America's Top Traders

“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.”
― Jack D. Schwager, Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders

“The idea that trading success is tied to finding some specific ideal approach is misguided. There is no single correct methodology.”
― Jack D. Schwager, The Little Book of Market Wizards: Lessons from the Greatest Traders

“Charting is a little like surfing. You don’t have to know a lot about the physics of tides, resonance, and fluid dynamics in order to catch a good wave. You just have to be able to sense when it’s happening and then have the drive to act at the right time.”
― Jack D. Schwager, Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders

“It is impossible to consistently outperform the market by using any information that the market already knows.”
― Jack D. Schwager, Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders

“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.”
― Jack D. Schwager, Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders