Richard Wyckoff Quotes

“A doubtful egg is nearly always a bad egg.”

“A sound idea is like a pebble thrown into a pool. The circles of its influence continually widen.”

“Anyone who buys or sells a stock, a bond or a commodity for profit is speculating if he employs intelligent foresight. If he does not, he is gambling.”

“Good coffee is a benefit, but great coffee is a reward, and the difference between good and great is just pennies a day.”

“I have yet to find a man, in or out of Wall Street, who is able to make money in markets continuously or uninterruptedly. Like anyone else, I have good and bad periods.”

“I noticed a very marked tendency to accept a small profit and stand for a big loss.”

“Listen to what the market is saying about others, not what others are saying about the market.”

“People are successful in business because, while they make mistakes at first, they study these mistakes and avoid them in the future. Then by gradually acquiring a knowledge of the basic principles of success, they develop into good business men. But how many apply this rule to investing and trading? Very few do any studying at all. Very few take the subject seriously. They drift into the market, very often get ‘nipped’ as the saying is, avoid it for a while, return from time to time with similar results, then gradually drift away from it, without ever having given themselves a chance to develop into what might be good traders or intelligent investors. This is all wrong. People go seriously into the study of medicine, the law, dentistry, or they take up with strong purpose the business of manufacturing or merchandising. But very few ever go deeply into this vital subject (of trading and investing) which should seriously be undertaken by all.”

“Reading all the financial news and evaluating it will avail you nothing. The market may rise on bad news and go down on good news. Then where are you?”

“Sometimes it is scientific to go with the crowd; at other times it is scientific to go against the crowd. The main thing is to be right.”

“Stock market technique is not an exact science. Stock (and commodities) prices are made by the minds of men (and women).”

“Success in trading means excess of profits over losses. If anyone tells you they can almost be invariably successful, put him down as trying to impose on your credulity.”

“The approach is not to limit the choice, but to provide a broader choice. It's appropriate to have choices that are indulgent and others that are better for you.”

“The best inside information is on the tape. I would rather follow its indications than act on a tip from J.P. Morgan himself.”

“The market always tells you what to do. It tells you: Get in. Get out. Move your stop. Close out. Stay neutral. Wait for a better chance. All these things the market is continually impressing upon you, and you must get into the frame of mind where you are in reality taking your orders from the action of the market itself — from the tape.”

“The tape is like a moving picture film. Every minute of the day it is demonstrating whether supply or demand is the greater. Prices are constantly showing strength or weakness: strength when buyers predominate and weakness when the offerings overpower the buyers. All the various phases from dullness to activity; from strength to weakness; from depression to boom, and from the top of the market down to the bottom – all these are faithfully recorded on the tape.

All these movements, small or great, demonstrate the workings of the Law of Supply and Demand. By transferring to the charts portions of what appears on the tape, for study and forecasting purposes, one is more readily enabled to make deductions with accuracy.”

“The tape is the best guide... The Law of Supply and Demand never fails and it is the only safe guide under these extraordinary conditions. No one can judge the probable trend of the market from the study of fundamental statistics, economic changes or political development, with any continued success.”

“Whenever a (market) situation is not entirely clear to me, I find I can clarify it by putting down on paper all the facts, classifying them as favorable and unfavorable. In thus writing it down on paper, I not only have time to reason out each point as I go along, but when I get it all down it can be looked over an analyzed to much better advantage.”

“While I have made it a practice to limit my risk in most cases, I can trace most of my principal losses to my failure to place stop orders when the trades were made.”

“You need never read anything on the financial page of your newspaper except the table of stock prices and volumes.”

“I not only aim to make money, but to keep it and make it grow.”

“Never get married to a security.”

“The investor who always chooses securities of companies who constantly put money back into their properties, will scarcely ever go wrong.”

“The trained man has all the advantages on his side; the untrained man invites all the tragic possibilities of failure.”

“There is no place in the modern world for the unskilled; no one can hope for any genuine success who fails to give himself the most complete special education.”

“You should either make a business of trading or else not try to be a trader. You cannot be successful at trading any more than you can be at mining, manufacturing, doctoring or anything else, unless you are trained for it.”

“The average man or woman never makes a success of day trading by reading moment by moment transactions of the market. Man or woman seldom makes a success of anything! That is true of trading stocks, business endeavors or even hobbies! Success in day trading usually results from years of painstaking effort and absolute concentration upon the subject. It requires the devotion of one's whole time and attention to – the tape. He should have no other business or profession. A man cannot serve two masters, and the tape is a tyrant.”

“A miner must understand how dynamite works before he can safely use it.”

“A profit is not a profit until it is realized.”

“A stop-order a few points away is insurance against a large loss in case you are wrong.”