Are you a stock market trader or investor looking for some inspiration to take your trades to the next level? Look no further — I’ve compiled some of the finest stock market quotes for traders and investors just like you.
But hey, I haven’t included any investing quotes by Warren Buffett as it’s already published as a dedicated blog post.
101 Investing & Trading Quotes & Sayings For Success
It’s 2020 and stock markets across the globe are crashing RIGHT NOW. And the markets are witnessing the biggest crash since the 2008 financial crisis. If you are already fully invested then the best thing to do right now is to stay away from all the noise and do your stuff.
Because SELLING in a free fall market is one of the worst things you could do to your portfolio. On the flip side, it’s the best time to accumulate your favorite stocks and also to switch from that average performer in your portfolio to a better stock.
Coming back…
Here are the top investing and trading quotes that I like the most. And I would say these are not just quotable quotes. It tells you the story of successful (oh yeah, failed too) traders or investors from across the globe.
- “The stock market is always there. It has been there for centuries, and it lives longer than anyone of us here. Therefore, don’t rush and trade all your capital like there is no tomorrow.” — Benjamin Lee
- “Plan the trade and trade the plan.” — Unknown
- “Don’t work for money, make it work for you.’’ — Robert Kiyosaki
- “All your trades must be at position sizes that make you unbreakable mentally and emotionally.” — Steve Burns
- “Stocks won’t make you wealthy. Your behavior around stocks makes you wealthy.” — Nick Murray
- “The secret recipe for success in stock market is simple. 30% in market analysis skills, 30% in risks management, 30% in emotion control, and 10% in luck.” — Benjamin Lee
- “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.” — Larry Hite
- “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
- “Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” — John Maynard Keynes
- “The secret to investing is to figure out the value of something and then pay a lot less.” — Joel Greenblatt
- “Do not underestimate the power of a raging bull, and the strength of a bear in stock market. Both have the power to trample you to death if you fight against them.” — Benjamin Lee
- “Everyday I assume every position I have is wrong.” — Paul Tudor Jones
- “Time is more important than price. When time is up price will reverse.” — W. D. Gann
- “If you can’t take a small loss, sooner or later you will take the mother of all losses.” — Ed Seykota
- “Accepting losses is the most important single investment device to insure safety of capital.” — Gerald M. Loeb
- “Take your profits or someone else will take them for you.” — J.J. Evans
- “Know what you own, and know why you own it.” — Peter Lynch
- “Bubbles are brutal… they force us to decide to either “look like an idiot before the crash, or look like an idiot after it”. — John Hussman
- “Enter early — but not too early. I often think of investing in growth companies in terms of baseball. Try to join the game in the third inning, because a company has proved itself by then. If you buy before the lineup is announced, you’re taking an unnecessary risk. There’s plenty of time (10 to 15 years in some cases) between the third and the seventh innings, which is where the 10- to 50-baggers are made. If you buy in the late innings, you may be too late.” — Peter Lynch
- “The time of maximum pessimism is the best time to buy, and the time of maximum optimism is the best time to sell.” — Sir John Templeton.
- “In investing, what is comfortable is rarely profitable.” — Robert Arnott
- “Pros will reenter a trade after it gets stopped out if the trade sets up again. Amateurs give up.” — Dan de Joya
- “Stock market goes up or down, and you can’t adjust your portfolio based on the whims of the market, so you have to have a strategy in a position and stay true to that strategy and not pay attention to noise that could surround any particular investment.” — John Paulson
- “I learned that even though markets look their very best when they are setting new highs, that is often the best time to sell.” — Paul Tudor Jones
- “Markets trend only about 15% of the time; the rest of the time they move sideways.”— Paul Tudor Jones
- “Never make forecasts, especially about the future.” — Samuel Goldwyn
- “Astronomic price earnings ratios rarely last for long, as they thrive on excessive hope and for that reason the most has to be made of them while they persist.” — Jim Slater
- “If a speculator is correct half of the time, he is hitting a good average. Even being right 3 or 4 times out of 10 should yield a person a fortune if he has the sense to cut his losses quickly on the ventures where he is wrong.” — Bernard Baruch
- “Nobody can predict interest rates, future direction of the economy, or the stock market. Dismiss all such forecasts and concentrate on what’s actually happening to the companies in which you have invested.” — Peter Lynch
- “I can’t recall ever once having seen the name of a market timer on Forbes‘ annual list of the richest people in the world. If it were truly possible to predict corrections, you’d think somebody would have made billions by doing it.” — Peter Lynch
- “Investing is not supposed to be easy. Anyone who finds it easy is stupid.” — Charlie Munger
- “Stock market is a battlefield. Always remember to survive in the game first. Only those that survive the battle can enjoy the spoils of the war.” — Benjamin Lee
- “Bottoms in the investment world don’t end with four-year lows; they end with 10- or 15-year lows.” — Jim Rogers
- “The whole secret to winning big in the stock market is not to be right all the time, but to lose the least amount possible when you’re wrong.” — William J. O’Neil
- “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it. He who doesn’t, pays it.” — Albert Einstein
- “A successful trader has realistic plans. He knows his abilities and limitations. He sees what is happening in the market and knows how to react to it.” — Alexander Elder
- “To be a good trader you need to trade with your eyes open, recognize real trends and turns, and not waste time or energy on regrets and wishful thinking.” — Alexander Elder
- “My largest positions aren’t the ones I think I’m going to make the most money from. My largest positions are the ones where I don’t think I’m going to lose money.” — Joel Greenblatt
- “The biggest secret about success is that there isn’t any big secret about it, or if there is, then it’s a secret from me, too. The idea of searching for some secret for trading success misses the point.” — Ed Seykota
- “To make money in stocks you must have the vision to see them, the courage to buy them and the patience to hold them.” — Thomas Phelps
- “If your investment horizon is long enough and your position sizing is appropriate, you simply don’t argue with idiocy, you bet against it.” — Bruce Chadwick
- “If we buy the business as a business and not as a stock speculation, then it becomes personal. I want it to be personal.” — Phil Town
- “Only those who are asleep make no mistakes.” — Ingvar Kamprad
- “Every trader will suffer big loss in their life. How you grow from it will determine your future. Lear from each loss to prevent future blowup.” — Unknown
- “If most traders would learn how to sit on their hands 50% of the time, they would make a lot more money.” — Lipschutz
- “Bulls make money, bears make money, pigs get slaughtered.” — Unknown
- “The time of maximum pessimism is the best time to buy, and the time of maximum optimism is the best time to sell.” — Sir John Templeton
- “Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.” — Unknown
- “To buy when others are despondently selling and to sell when others are avidly buying requires the greatest fortitude.” — John Templeton
- “I’ve never bought a stock unless, in my view, it was on sale.” — John Neff
- “Most investors want to do today what they should have done yesterday.” — Larry Summers
- “I am the trader I am today because of the trades I made yesterday.” — Unknown
- “There is nothing riskier than the widespread perception that there is no risk.” — Howard Marks
- “The problem with the person who thinks he’s a long-term investor and impervious to short-term gyrations is that emotion of fear and pain will eventually make him sell badly.” —Robert Wibblesman
- “If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.” — Jack Welch
- “If you are shopping for common stocks, choose them the way you would buy groceries, not the way you would buy perfume.” — Benjamin Graham
- “The one reality that you can never change is that a higher-priced asset will produce a lower return than a lower-priced asset. You can’t have your cake and eat it. You can enjoy it now, or you can enjoy it steadily in the distant future, but not both – and the price we pay for having this market go higher and higher is a lower 10-year return from the peak.” — Benjamin Graham
- “Good trading is boring. Gamblers seek excitement, pros seek consistent profitability and low volatility. That’s how longevity is achieved.” — Mark Minervini
- “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” — Lucius Annaeus Seneca
- “The credibility of any item in finance is inversely proportionate to the amount of publicity it receives.” —- Michael Scott
- “Not cheap without reason, nor dear without value.” — Unknown
- “Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.” — Henry David Thoreau
- “Even the most intelligent investor is likely to need considerable willpower to keep from following the crowd.” — Benjamin Graham
- “A lot of people get so enmeshed in the markets that they lose their perspective.” — Martin Schwartz
- “It costs $0.00 to wait for a good trading signal.” — Steve Burns
- “The fastest way to lose your whole trading account is to try to quickly double it.” — Steve Burns
- “It’s time, not timing, that makes money in the market.” — Unknown
- “If you believe you or anyone else has a system to predict the future of the market, the joke is on you.” — R. Wanger
- “An investor without investment objectives is like a traveler without a destination.” — Ralph Seger
- “The best traders have no ego. You have to swallow your pride and get out of the losses.” — Tom Baldwin
- “Fear is a stronger emotion that hope, which is why bear markets are always swifter than bull markets.” — Unknown
- “Above all else, in other words, the stock market is people. It is people trying to read the future. And it is this intensely human quality that makes the stock market so dramatic an arena, in which men and women pit their conflicting judgements, their hopes and fears, strengths and weaknesses, greeds and ideals.” — Bernard Baruch
- “A portfolio that goes down 50 percent and comes back 50 percent is still down 25 percent.” — Unknown
- “In trading the impossible happens about twice a year.” — Henri M Simoes
- “The greatest edges rich traders have over unprofitable traders are discipline, patience, perseverance, and a quantified winning system.” — Steve Burns
- “A trader must know himself and provide against his own weaknesses.” — Unknown
- “Stocks don’t just move, they are moved.” — Jeff Cooper
- “The four most dangerous words in investing: ‘this time it’s different.’” — Sir John Templeton
- “All you need is one pattern to make a living.” — Linda Raschke
- “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” — Benjamin Franklin
- “The way to make money is to buy when blood is running in the streets.” — John D Rockefeller
- “In trading everything works sometimes and nothing works always.” — Unknown
- “But what actually registers in the stock market’s fluctuations are not the events themselves, but the human reactions to these events. In short, how millions of individual men and women feel these happenings may affect their future.” — Bernard Baruch
- “Capital isn’t scarce; vision is.” — Sam Walton
- “Volatility in the up direction is not a problem, it’s only downward volatility that offers discourse.” — Coreen T. Sol
- Human is always subject to his own emotion. How many of us can break free from the greed, fear, and unfounded hope that are so common in stock market?” — Benjamin Lee
- “Good trading is not about being right, it’s about trading right. If you want to be successful, you need to think of the long run and ignore the individual trades.” — Curtis Faith
- “A winning strategy must include losing.” — Rich Dad
- “Bear Market: A 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewelry and the husband get no sex.” — Anon
- “Bankers are people who lend you their umbrella in good weather, but who want to have it back as soon as it starts raining.” — Mark Twain
- “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” — Benjamin Graham
- “Mature understanding of and respect of risk is the hallmark of the best traders. They know if you don’t keep an eye of risk, it will set its eye on you.” — Richard Dennis
- “Trading is not a sprint; it is boxing. The market will beat you up, screw with your head, and do anything it can to defeat you. But when the bell sounds at the end of the twelfth round, you must be standing in the ring in order to win.” — Curtis Faith
- “The market owes you nothing. Take full responsibility for everything that happens and your results will improve.” — Dan Zanger
- “Time is the cause, Volume is the fuel, and Price is the result. Of all these three, Time is the greatest factor in determining stock market direction.” — Benjamin Lee
- “A sensible trader never risks more than 2% of his equity on any one trade.” — Alexander Elder
- “Know what you own, and know why you own it.” — Peter Lynch
- “I’m only rich because I know when I’m wrong… I basically have survived by recognizing my mistakes.” — George Soros
- “The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.” — Benjamin Graham
- “But investing isn’t about beating others at their game. It’s about controlling yourself at your own game.” — Benjamin Graham
- The stock investor is neither right or wrong because others agreed or disagreed with him; he is right because his facts and analysis are right.” — Benjamin Graham
- People who invest make money for themselves; people who speculate make money for their brokers.” — Benjamin Graham
- “A stock broker is one who invests other people’s money until its all gone.” — Woody Allen
- “Trees don’t grow to the sky, and markets don’t fall to the floor.” — Prem Watsa
- “On the other hand, investing is a unique kind of casino—one where you cannot lose in the end, so long as you play only by the rules that put the odds squarely in your favor.” — Benjamin Graham
- “To be successful, new traders must realize that trading is about probabilities, trends, and risk management, not predictions.” — Steve Burns
- “Wealthy people are not gamblers, but simply ordinary people who understand the wealth building principles necessary to succeed.” — Jan Somers
- “The longer you wait for a losing trade to reverse and go in your favor, the greater the likelihood that you are on the wrong side of a trend.” — Steve Burns
- “Prepare for bad times and you will only know good times.” — Robert Kiyosaki
- “Money is not the only thing we invest. We must also be good investors of our time, energy, focus, & love. Our current life is a reflection of the wisdom of our past investments.” — Steve Burns
- “Tight congestions in which a breakout occurs for reasons that nobody understands are usually good risk/reward trades.” — Bruce Kovner
- “The secret of financial success is to buy cheap, to sell expensive, to collect the money quickly and pay late.” — Richard Lewin
- “If you personalize losses, you can’t trade.” — Bruce Kovner
- “If you wait for the right time to buy, you’ll never buy anything at all. And if you sell when everyone says sell, you’ll never have anything at all.” — Jan Somers
- “I have probably purchased fifty ‘hot tips’ in my career, maybe even more. When I put them all together, I know I am a net loser.” — C. Schwab.
- “If your position sizing is too big, it is a certainty that the account will blow up, not if, just when.” — Joo Beng
- “Of all speculative blunders there are few worse than trying to average a losing game.” — Jesse Livermore
- “One of the most helpful things that anybody can learn is to give up trying to catch the last eighth-or the first. These two are the most expensive eighths in the world.” — Jesse Livermore
- “I am just as happy a trader in a bear market as in a bull market, rates up or down, commodities up or down.” — Bruce Kovner
- “Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others.” — John Maynard Keynes
- “Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better.” — Jim Rohn
- “My main life lesson from investing: self-interest is the most powerful force on earth, can get people to embrace and defend almost anything.” — Jesse Livermore
Don’t Miss: Why Market Timing Doesn’t Matter And When Does It Costs A Fortune
Closing Thoughts
There’s no such thing as a perfect stock or perfect investing/trading strategy. Everyone follows his own style of investing and trading. I have mine and you have yours (create one if you don’t).
I don’t know how I ended up creating this list of stock market quotes because I never planned to create one. I think the global stock market correction that’s happening right now influenced me and made me put together some of the best investing and trading quotes.
Needless to say, these are my personal trading quotes that makes sense for me one way or the other. There’s a big chance that you won’t agree with some or all of them.
But do feel free to share your opinion as a comment below. If you did enjoy them, then please share it with your friends and family on your social media.
So what’s your all-time favorite investing/trading quote?
Happy Trading/Investing! 🙂
First Published: March 20, 2018; Last Updated: Friday, January 15, 2021.