Paul Tudor Jones Quotes Page 4

“One learns the most from mistakes, not successes.”

“One of my number one rules as an investor is as soon as I find out a manager is going through divorce, redeem immediately. Because the emotional distraction that comes from divorce is so overwhelming, that the idea you can think straight for 60 seconds and be able to make a rationale decision is impossible, particularly when there are kids involved. You can automatically subtract 10 to 20 percent from any manager if he is going through divorce.”

“One of my weaknesses is that I always tend to be too optimistic, particularly about the ability of other people to succeed.”

“One problem with failure. It can stay with you for a very long time.”

“Quite often that dragon of failure is really chasing you off the wrong road and on to the right one.”

“Serving others is really, really important. It truly is the secret to happiness in life.”

“Some of your greatest successes are going to be the children of failure.”

“Some things happen to you that at the time will make you feel like the world is coming to an end, but in actuality, there is a very good reason for it. You just can’t see it and don’t know it.”

“Sometimes failure is merely chasing you off the wrong road and onto the right one.”

“The accumulation and then the repayment of debt basically drives every economic cycle that there is.”

“The concept of paying one-hundred-and-something times earnings for any company for me is just anathema. Having said that, at the end of the day, your job is to buy what goes up and to sell what goes down so really who gives a damn about PE's?”

“The idea that you can’t beat the markets is a frightening prospect. That is why my guiding philosophy is playing great defense.”

“The markets have been so good to me that I feel I should give back something in return.”

“The most important rule is to play great defense, not great offense. Everyday 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 drawdown. 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.”

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

“The single most important things that you can do is diversify your portfolio. Diversification is key, playing defense is key, and, again, just staying in the game for as long as you can.”

“The whole world is simply nothing more than a flow chart for capital.”

“There is no training, classroom or otherwise, that can prepare for trading the last third of a move, whether it's the end of a bull market or the end of a bear market.”

“There is nothing worse than a bad trading day.”

“There's such an emphasis on making money that we've really taken the humanity out of business.”

“There’s a time when to hold em and a time when to fold em. You’re not going to necessarily always be in situation to make a lot of money, where the opportunities are great.”

“There’s never going to be a time where you can say with certainty that this is the mix I should have for the next five or ten years. The world changes so fast.”

“These days, there are many more deep intellectuals in the business, and that, coupled with the explosion of information on the Internet, creates the illusion that there is an explanation for everything and that the primary task is simply to find that explanation. As a result, technical analysis is at the bottom of the study list for many of the younger generation, particularly since the skill often requires them to close their eyes and trust the price action. The pain of gain is just too overwhelming for all of us to bear!”

“Trading gives you an incredibly intense feeling of what life is all about. Emotionally, you live on the extremes.”

“Trading is very competitive and you have to be able to handle getting your butt kicked.”

“Treasury Secretary Baker’s weekend statement that the U.S. would no longer support the dollar because of its disagreements with West Germany was the kiss of death for the market.”

“We have ripped the humanity out of our companies. It's threatening the very underpinnings of our society.”

“We’ve seen cheap companies get cheaper many, many times. If something’s going down, I want to be short it, and if something’s going up, I want to be long it. The sweet spot is when you find something with a compelling valuation that is also just beginning to move up. That’s every investor’s dream.”

“When I got into the business, there was so little information on fundamentals, and what little information one could get was largely imperfect. We learned just to go with the chart. Why work when Mr. Market can do it for you?”

“When I trade, I don’t just use a price stop, I also use a time stop. If I think a market should break, and it doesn’t, I will often get out even if I’m not losing any money.”