79 Trading Quotes to Set You on the Road to Success

I'd like to show you my trading desk. It's glued with quotes from successful traders. Trading is not all fun and games. You need a booster sometimes to get away from bad days, so in this guide, I'll dig deep into some of the best trading motivation quotes. You can apply them to your trading strategy and trading system mindset.

These quotes have helped me in my trading journey, and they will help you, whether you focus on Forex trading or other markets, as you approach trading. I'll divide 79 quotes into different categories.

Trading Motivation Quotes

As a trader, you need motivation at every stage. If you are constantly losing, you need the motivation to help you kick-start. If you are winning, you need the motivation to do better. These motivational trading quotes stress the importance of a solid trading plan:

1. “Opportunities come infrequently. When it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble.”

Warren Buffett

(Known as the oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett is an investor and former CEO of Berkshire Hathaway)

2. “It was clear to me that other people could trade for a living, and if other people could do it, then I could persevere long enough to figure it out.”

Rob Booker

(He is a trader and an analyst for investment service Hot Sheets)

3. “The purpose of trading is not being right, the purpose is to make money, and I think that’s my number-one rule. Don’t get hung up on your current positions.”

Dana Allen

(She is a business instructor at Washington and Jefferson College)

4. “The way to build long-term returns is through preservation of capital and home runs.”

Stanley Druckenmiller

(He is an investor, hedge fund manager, and former president of Duquesne Capital)

5. “The best way to measure your investing success is not by whether you’re beating the market but by whether you’ve put in place a financial plan and a behavioral discipline that are likely to get you where you want to go.”

Benjamin Graham

(He was an economist and investor. He is called the father of value investing.)

6. “The goal of a successful trader is to make the best trades. Money is secondary.”

Alexander Elder

(He is a professional trader and an author)

7. “In this business, if you’re good, you’re right six times out of ten. You’re never going to be right nine times out of ten.”

Peter Lynch

(He is an investor who is known for doubling his annual returns at Fidelity Investments)

8. “If most traders learned to sit on their hands 50 percent of the time, they would make a lot more money.”

Bill Lipschutz

(He is the Principal and Director of Portfolio Management for Hathersage)

9. “Time is your friend; impulse is your enemy.”

John Bogle

(He was an American investor, business magnate, and philanthropist)

10. “There is a time to go long, a time to go short, and a time to go fishing.”

Jesse Livermore

(He was an American stock trader. He is considered a pioneer of day trading.)

11. “If you can learn to create a state of mind that is not affected by the market’s behavior, the struggle will cease to exist.”

Mark Douglas

(He is the author of The Disciplined Trader: Developing Winning Attitudes, one of the first books to introduce the investment industry to the concept of trading psychology)

12. “Dangers of watching every tick are twofold: overtrading and increased chances of prematurely liquidating good positions.”

Jack Schwager

(He is an American trader and author)

13. “We want to perceive ourselves as winners, but successful traders are always focusing on their losses.”

Peter Borish

(He is Chairman and CEO of Computer Trading Corporation (CTC), an investment and advisory firm whose largest consulting client is CIBC)

14. “A peak performance trader is totally committed to being the best and doing whatever it takes to be the best. They feel totally responsible for whatever happens and thus can learn from their mistakes. These people typically have a working business plan for trading because they treat trading as a business.”

Van K. Tharp

(He is an author and a trader known for his books about trading psychology)

15. “You don't need to be a rocket scientist. Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with 130 IQ.”

Warren Buffett

16. “That cotton trade was almost the deal breaker for me. It was at that point that I said, "Mr. Stupid, why risk everything on one trade? Why not make your life a pursuit of happiness rather than pain?”

Paul Tudor Jones

(He is an American billionaire hedge fund manager)

17. “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”

Confucius

(He is known as the first teacher in China)

20. “The goal of a successful trader is to make the best trades. Money is secondary.”

Alexander Elder

18. “It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives. It's what we do consistently.”

Tony Robbins

(He is an American author, coach, speaker, and philanthropist)

19. “Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas.”

Paul Samuelson

(He was an American economist who was the first American to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences).

Trading psychology quotes

Trading is 90% psychology and 10% skills and analysis. I'm not kidding. If you don't let a bogus emotion cloud your judgment, you'll benefit from this trading wisdom. Many pro traders consider it the essence of trading and emphasize making objective trading and investment decisions.

Let's find out what they have said about trading psychology.

1. “You need to know very well when to move away, or give up the loss, and not allow the anxiety to trick you into trying again.”

Warren Buffett

2. “Trade what’s happening… Not what you think is gonna happen.”

Doug Gregory

(He is an insider trader and an author).

3. “The hard, cold reality of trading is that every trade has an uncertain outcome.”

Mark Douglas

4. The game of speculation is the most uniformly fascinating in the world. But it is not a game for the stupid, the mentally lazy, the person of inferior emotional balance, or the get-rich-quick adventurer. They will die poor.”

Jesse Livermore

5. “The consistency you seek is in your mind, not in the markets.”

Mark Douglas

6. “If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.”

Warren Buffett

7. “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”

Benjamin Franklin

(He was an American diplomat. He is one of the founding fathers.)

8. “The market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.”

Warren Buffett

9. “We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.”

Warren Buffett

10. “Accepting losses is the most important single investment device to ensure the safety of capital.”

Gerald M. Loeb

(He was a founding partner of E.F. Hutton & Co., a renowned Wall Street trader and brokerage firm)

11. “The hard part is discipline, patience, and judgment.”

Seth Klarman

(He is an American billionaire investor, hedge fund manager, and author).

12. “The key to trading success is emotional discipline. If intelligence were the key, there would be a lot more people making money trading… I know this will sound like a cliché, but the single most important reason that people lose money in the financial markets is that they don’t cut their losses short.”

Victor Sperandeo

13. “Focus, patience, wise discernment, non-attachment — the skills you acquire in meditation and the skills you need to thrive in trading are one and the same.”

Yvan Byeajee

(He is the man behind Trading Composure. He calls himself the philosopher of traders).

14. “What seems too high and risky to the majority generally goes higher, and what seems low and cheap generally goes lower.”

William O’Neil

(He is an American entrepreneur, stockbroker, and writer).

15. “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.”

Paul Tudor Jones.

16. “The secret to being successful from a trading perspective is to have an indefatigable and an undying and unquenchable thirst for information and knowledge.”

Paul Tudor Jones.

17. “You need to know very well when to move away, or give up the loss, and not allow the anxiety to trick you into trying again.”

Warren Buffett

18. “The markets are always on the side of exuberance or fear. It's fear and greed. Right now, greed has the better of it, which is rather nice (for investors) as long as it doesn't get out of hand.”

George Soros

19. “The expectation that you bring with you in trading is often the greatest obstacle you will encounter.”

Yvan Byeajee

20. “You will find the key to success under the alarm clock.”

Benjamin Franklin

Risk Management Quotes

The reason you are in the trading game is to make profits. However, losing is part of the trading game. What you need to do is to have more wins than losses. Before you start losing money, here are the best quotes for risk management:

1. “Letting losses run is the most serious mistake made by most investors.”

William O’Neil

2. “When you genuinely accept the risks, you will be at peace with any outcome.”

Mark Douglas

3. “If you don’t invest in risk management, it doesn’t matter what business you’re in. It’s a risky business.”

Gary Cohn

(He is an American business leader who served as the 11th Director of the National Economic Council and chief economic advisor to President Donald Trump from 2017 to 2018)

4. “Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.”

Warren Buffett

5. “Risk is a function of how poorly a strategy will perform if the ‘wrong’ scenario occurs.”

Michael Porter

(He is an American academic known for his theories on economics)

6. “The key to risk management is never putting yourself in a position where you cannot live to fight another day.”

Richard S. Fuld, Jr.

(He is an American banker best known as the final chairman and chief executive officer of investment bank Lehman Brothers)

7. “Managing risk is very different from managing strategy. Risk management focuses on the negative threats and failures rather than opportunities and successes.”

Robert S. Kaplan

(He is an American accounting academic)

8. “The essence of investment management is the management of risks, not the management of returns.”

Benjamin Graham

9. “Thoughtfully assessing and addressing enterprise risk and placing a high value on corporate transparency can protect the one thing we cannot afford to lose: trust.”

Dale E. Jones

(He is one of the world’s top CEO and board leadership consultants)

10. “Effective management always means asking the right question.”

Robert Heller

(He was a British management journalist and management consultant)

11. “If you only take small risks, you are only entitled to a small life.”

Robin Sharma

(He is a Canadian writer, best known for his The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari book series)

12. “If you risk something important to you for something unimportant to you, it just doesn’t make sense.”

Warren Buffett

13. “We try to protect against tail risk: the risk of unlikely but possible events that could be catastrophic.”

Seth Klarman

14. “The way I would think about risk aversion is that most people would not want to toss a coin for their entire net worth.”

Seth Klarman

15. “You have to say to yourself, "If I'm right, how much am I going to make? If I'm wrong, how much am I going to lose? That's the risk/reward ratio."

Peter Lynch

16. “Diversification of risk matters not just defensively, but because it maximizes returns as well. We expose ourselves to all of the opportunities that there may be out there.”

Peter Bernstein

17. “Risk-taking is an inevitable ingredient in investing, and in life, but never take a risk you do not have to take.”

Peter Bernstein

18. “Throughout my financial 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.”

Larry Hite

19. “Are you willing to lose money on a trade? If not, then don't take it. You can only win if you're not afraid to lose. And you can only do that if you truly accept the risks in front of you.”

Sami Abusad

(He is a trader and an author)

20. “In investing, what is comfortable is rarely profitable.”

Robert Arnott

Funny Trading Mindset Quotes

Trading is not all fun and games, but sometimes you need a bit of a laugh to get you through tough days. The best funny investment advice quotes can lift your mood and reveal market trends at the same time:

1. “Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.”

Warren Buffett

2. “Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”

John Maynard Keynes

(He was an English economist whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics)

3. “Bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism, and die of euphoria.”

John Templeton

(He was a legendary investor and mutual fund manager who founded the Templeton Growth Fund)

4. “Money, if it does not bring you happiness, will at least help you be miserable in comfort.”

Helen Gurley Brown

(She was an American author, publisher, and businesswoman)

5. “It’s nice to have a lot of money, but you know, you don’t want to keep it around forever. I prefer buying things. Otherwise, it’s a little like saving sex for your old age.”

Warren Buffett

6. “The main purpose of the stock market is to fool as many men as possible.”

Bernard Baruch

7. “I know people who repeatedly jump from one guru to the next in search of the Holy Grail of trading. Of course, it doesn’t exist, but you need to know this fact to stop looking for it.”

Naved Abdali

(He is an investor and an author)

8. “An investor without investment objectives is like a traveler without a destination.”

Ralph Seger

(Seger retired from Uniroyal, was a founder of the investment firm of Seger-Elvekrog)

9. “If you are shopping for common stocks, choose them the way you would buy groceries, not the way you would buy perfume.”

Benjamin Graham

10. “If you can’t take a small loss, sooner or later, you will take the mother of all losses.”

Ed Seykota

(He is a commodities trader who earned an SB degree in Electrical Engineering from MIT)

11. “You learn in this business: If you want a friend, get a dog.”

Carl Icahn

(He is an American activist shareholder).

12. “A lagging indicator is something that tells you what is going to happen after it has already happened.”

Coreen T. Sol

(Being a Chartered Financial Analyst, she is a Portfolio Manager with more than 20 years of experience in private wealth management)

13. “I made a killing in the stock market. My broker lost all my money, so I killed him.”

Jim Loy

(He served as the acting US Secretary of Homeland Security in 2005)

14. “If stock market experts were so expert, they would be buying stocks, not selling advice.”

Norman R. Augustine

(He is a US aerospace businessman who served as the United States Under Secretary of the Army from 1975 to 1977)

15. “If you feel like doubling up a profitable position, slam your dialing finger in the drawer until the feeling goes away.”

Anonymous

16. “One of the funny things about the stock market is that every time one person buys, another sells, and both think they are astute.”

William Feather

(He was an American publisher and author)

17. “I’m involved in the stock market, which is fun and, sometimes, very painful.”

Regis Philbin

(He was an American television presenter, talk show host, game show host, actor, and singer)

18. “All my money is in a savings account. My dad has explained the stock market to me maybe 75 times. I still don’t understand it.”

John Mulaney

(He is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and producer)

19. “Never make forecasts, especially about the future.”

Samuel Goldwyn

(Also known as Samuel Goldfish, a Polish-American film producer)

20. “Average investors who try to do a lot of trading will only make their brokers rich.”

Michael Jenson

(He is an entrepreneur and a producer at USC)

Final thoughts

I'm glad you have made it this far. If you are a beginner on a demo account, then these quotes can help you get motivated. Remember that action speaks louder than words. You should avoid constant action irrespective of market conditions. So, don't just read quotes; start trading.