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.
There are just four kinds of bets. There are good bets, bad bets, bets that you win, and bets that you lose. Winning a bad bet can be the most dangerous outcome of all, because a success of that kind can encourage you to take more bad bets in the future, when the odds will be running against you. You can also lose a good bet no matter how sound the underlying proposition, but if you keep placing good bets, over time, the law of averages will be working for you.
Never risk more than 1% of total account equity on any one trade. By risking 1%, I am indifferent to any individual trade. Keeping your risk small and constant is absolutely critical.
We approach markets backwards. The first thing we ask is not what can we make, but how much can we lose. We play a defensive game.
It is incredible how rich you can get by not being perfect
If you diversify, control your risk, and go with the trend, it just has to work.
Frankly, I don't see markets; I see risks, rewards, and money.
Throughout my trading career, I have continually witnessed examples of other people that I have known being ruined by a failure to respect risk. If you don’t take a hard look at risk, it will take you.
No matter what information you have, no matter what you are doing, you can be wrong.
When a market makes a historic high, it is telling you something. No matter how many people tell you why the market shouldn't be that high, or why nothing has changed, the mere fact that the price is at a new high tells you something has changed.
I don't trade for excitement; I trade to win
I have noticed that everyone who has ever tried to tell me that markets are efficient is poor.
We diversify in two ways. First, we probably trade more markets worldwide than any other money manager. Second, we don't just use a single best system. To provide balance, we use lots of different systems ranging from short to long term. Some of these systems may not be that good by themselves, but we really don't care; that is not what they are there for.
