Smart traders know that the experience of other traders can be a valuable source of inspiration and guidance, this is why quotes about stock market trading are so important for you to learn stock trading.

Consciously learning from people that have gone before you, who are already profitable traders, is a great way to accelerate your progress and accomplish your trading goals. As you will see below, there is huge wisdom in some simple statements… do not dismiss these as superficial because it takes a lot of trading experience to distil down complex trading concepts to elegant statements such as the quotes about the stock market that you find here.

One of the best things is that all successful traders have been through their fair share of setbacks, and the best of them share the lessons that they’ve learned along the way. They show us that while you will inevitably encounter challenges and experience failure, it is imperative learn from them and keep going!

After all, nobody makes money from quitting!

Fortunately for us, some of the greatest trading minds have condensed their wisdom into meaningful quotes that we can call upon to help motivate us when we need it the most. Sometimes we can get stuck or bogged down with our trading, but by seeking out a little guidance and inspiration you can reframe and broaden your mind and turn any situation around.

So, from motivational quotes to cautionary anecdotes, here is a collection of quotes on trading  from some of my favourite trading mentors and authors to impart a little wisdom…

Quotes About Trading by Richard Dennis

A good Trend Following system will keep you in the market until there is evidence that the trend has changed.

How much of a role does luck play in trading? In the long run, zero. Absolutely zero. I don’t think anybody winds up making money in this business because they started out lucky.

You have to minimize your losses and try to preserve capital for those very few instances where you can make a lot in a very short period of time. What you can’t afford to do is throw away your capital on sub-optimal trades.

Trading decisions should be made as unemotionally as possible.

I always say you could publish rules in a newspaper and no one would follow them. The key is consistency and discipline.

When you have a position, you put it on for a reason, and you’ve got to keep it until the reason no longer exists.

Quotes About Trading by Paul Tudor Jones

I’m always thinking about losing money as opposed to making money. Don’t focus on making money, focus on protecting what you have.

 At the end of the day, the most important thing is how good are you at risk control. Ninety-percent of any great trader is going to be the risk control.

I think one of my strengths is that I view anything that has happened up to the present point in time as history. I really don’t care about the mistake I made three seconds ago in the market. What I care about is what I am going to do from the next moment on. I try to avoid any emotional attachment to a market.

The most important rule is to play great defence, not great offense. Every day 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.

Ninety-percent of any great trader is going to be the risk control

Where you want to be is always in control, never wishing, always trading, and always, first and foremost protecting your butt.

You learn more from your losses, than from your gains.

Don’t focus on making money; focus on protecting what you have.

Quotes About Trading by Ray Dalio

What is most important isn’t knowing the future, it is knowing how to react appropriately to the information available at each point in time.

Quotes About Trading by Ed Seykota

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

Systems don’t need to be changed. The trick is for a trader to develop a system with which he is compatible.

In order of importance to me are: 1) the long-term trend, 2) the current chart pattern, and 3) picking a good spot to buy or sell.

Dramatic and emotional trading experiences tend to be negative. Pride is a great banana peel, as are hope, fear, and greed. My biggest slip-ups occurred shortly after I got emotionally involved with positions.

Risk control has to do with your willingness to allow your stop to do its job.

A trading system is an agreement you make between yourself and the markets.

In your recipe for success, don’t forget commitment – and a deep belief in the inevitability of your success.

The markets are the same now as they were five or ten years ago because they keep changing-just as they did then.

Quotes About Trading by Dr. Van K. Tharp

Most people approach trading to make a lot of money, and that is one of the primary reasons they lose.

The realization that you are responsible for the results you get is the key to successful investing. Winners know they are responsible for their results; losers think they are not.

The composite profile of a losing trader would be someone who is highly stressed and has little protection from stress, has a negative outlook on life and expects the worst, has a lot of conflict in his/her personality, and blames others when things go wrong. Such a person would not have a set of rules to guide their behaviour and would be more likely a crowd follower. In addition, losing traders tend to be disorganized and impatient.

The top traders that I’ve worked with began their careers with an extensive study of the markets. They developed and refined models of how to trade. They mentally rehearsed what they wanted to do extensively until they had the belief that they would win. At this point, they had both the confidence and the commitment necessary to produce success.

You do not trade the markets. You can only trade your beliefs about the markets.

A mistake is when you don’t follow your rules. If you don’t have rules in trading, everything you do is a mistake.

The best traders are always those who practice simplicity.

Quotes About Trading by Mark Weinstein

You have to learn how to lose; it is more important than learning how to win. If you think you are always going to be a winner, when you lose, you will develop feelings of hostility and end up blaming the market instead of trying to learn why you lost.

Quotes About Trading by Tom Baldwin

The best traders have no ego. You have to swallow your pride and get out of the losses.

Quotes About Trading by Larry Hite

Frankly, I don’t see markets; I see risks, rewards, and money.

I don’t trade for excitement; I trade to win.

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.

I start out with the one thing I can know – how much am I willing to lose?

If you diversify, control your risk, and go with the trend, it just has to work.

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.

Respect for risk is not just a matter of trading; it applies to any type of business decision.

The truth is that, while you can’t quantify reward, you can quantify risk.

Quotes About Trading by Mark Douglas

If your goal is to trade like a professional and be a consistent winner, then you must start from the premise that the solutions are in your mind and not in the market.

When you achieve complete acceptance of the uncertainty of each edge and the uniqueness of each moment, your frustration with trading will end.

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

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

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

Remember, the best traders think in a number of unique ways. They have acquired a mental structure that allows them to trade without fear and, at the same time, keeps them from becoming reckless and committing fear-based errors.

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

When I put on a trade, all I expect is that something will happen.

Putting on a winning trade or even a series of winning trades requires absolutely no skill. On the other hand, creating consistent results and being able to keep what we’ve created does require skill. Making money consistently is a by-product of acquiring and mastering mental skills.

Quotes About Trading by Tom Basso

As long as you learn something from a loss, it’s not really a loss.

When your account has these massive swings up and down, there’s a tendency to feel a rush when the market is going your way and devastation when it’s going against you. These emotions do absolutely nothing to make you a good trader. It’s far better to keep the equity swings manageable and strive for a sense of balance each day, no matter what happens.

I think investment psychology is by far the more important element, followed by risk control, with the least important consideration being the question of where to buy and sell.

As soon as you take responsibility for your life, you can change the world.

Quotes About Trading by Jerry Parker

It’s really important to have a systematic approach to your trading, and to stick to that system and follow it

To me it just boiled down to one question… Will the big winners pay for the small losses?

Quotes About Trading by Richard Weissman

You have to learn how to lose; it is more important than learning how to win. If you think you are always going to be a winner, when you lose, you will develop feelings of hostility and end up blaming the market instead of trying to learn why you lost.

You have to build models that are aligned with the type of psychological pain that you’re going to have to endure during the drawdowns.

The difference between great traders and the rest isn’t magic entry points, instead they’re better risk managers and better at position management.

If people can tell by looking at you whether you’re having a good or bad day in the markets, your positions are too big.

Quotes About Trading by Larry Williams

The three traits speculators must learn to manage within themselves are confidence, fear, and aggressiveness.

What you will be looking for is a day that closes above the prior day’s high and most likely ‘breaks’ out to the upside to close above a trading range. This is the twitching worm that causes the public to leap before they look.

The next time you see an outside day with a down close lower than the previous day, don’t get scared, get ready to buy!

The most common bad habit I have seen in traders – good and bad ones – is the inability to react correctly to market action.

The moment you learn to trade reality, not desire, you will drill a wall of fire to become a successful trader.

Ultimately you don’t trade the market you trade your personality.

I look for a condition and then build a trading approach from that condition.

Quotes About Trading by Robert Pardo

Many traders have difficulty coming up with a back testing method they can have confidence in.

Quotes About Trading by Brett Steenbarger

We become what we consistently do. Routine is necessary for efficiency; breaking routine is necessary for adaptation.

The core problem, however, is the need to fit markets into a style of trading rather than finding ways to trade that fit with market behaviour.

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.

Successful traders spend as much time studying themselves and their trading as studying markets. In the patterns of your best and worst trades is the information that can make you the best trader you can be.

Writing a journal is a great first step, but ultimately matters little if the journal entries don’t guide concrete goal setting and efforts at improvement.

Many times, when traders don’t follow their trading plans, it’s because those plans don’t truly fit who they are.

If setbacks are treated as learning experiences, they are unlikely to generate stress and distress. If we view setbacks as failures and reflections on our competence, then we generate our own stress.

These are the 3 legs of the performance stool:
1) Your talents & interests,
2) Your trading style, and
3) Markets and their personalities.
The meshing of your qualities with your trading style will help determine your ability to trade that style with consistency and discipline.

True deliberate practice is a significant predictor of success.

Quotes About Trading by Michael Covel

If you must play, decide upon three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and quitting time.

Our best trading days are when we don’t trade.

When designing a system, I believe it’s important to construct a set of rules that fit more like a mitten than like a glove.

Our job is to systematically sift price data to find trends and act on them and not let the latest news flashes sway our market opinions.

Keep down your losses—never let them get away from you. Let your profits take care of themselves.

Trading is a waiting game. You sit, you wait, and you make a lot of money all at once. Profits come in bunches. The trick when going sideways between home runs is not to lose too much in between.

Do not let emotions fluctuate with the up and down of your capital.

Quotes About Trading by Alexander Elder

To help ensure success, practice defensive money management. A good trader watches his capital as carefully as a professional scuba diver watches his air supply.

There are good trading systems out there, but they have to be monitored and adjusted using individual judgment. You have to stay on the ball—you cannot abdicate responsibility for your success to a mechanical system.

To win in the markets, we need to master three essential components of trading: sound psychology, a logical trading system, and an effective risk management plan.

Why do most traders lose and wash out of the markets? Emotional and mindless trading are big reasons, but there is another. Markets are actually set up so that most traders must lose money. The trading industry slowly kills traders with commissions and slippage.

Before we analyse charts and look for stocks to buy or sell, let’s explore several basic questions: what markets to trade, how to manage risk, and why keep a trading journal.

Quotes About Trading by Jack Schwager

Being wrong is acceptable but staying wrong is totally unacceptable.

You just stay focused on what you have to do. Exactly.

Actually, the best traders have no ego.

I discovered that you can’t train people how to trade by just imparting knowledge. The key to trading success is emotional discipline. Making money has nothing to do with intelligence. Think of all the bright people that choose careers on Wall Street. If intelligence were the key, there would be a lot more people making money trading.

If you don’t stay with your winners, you are not going to be able to pay for the losers.

One of my rules was to get out when the volatility and the momentum became absolutely insane.

You don’t want to have a position before a move has started. You want to wait until the move is already under way before you get into the market.

Quotes About Trading by Thomas Stridesman

If you really want to make a trading business, grind it out, do the same thing every day.

Quotes About Trading by Michael Steinhardt

A good trader has to have three things: a chronic inability to accept things at face value, to feel continuously unsettled, and to have humility.

The hardest thing over the years has been having the courage to go against the dominant wisdom of the time to have a view that is a variance with the present consensus and bet that view.

The markets are always changing, and the successful trader needs to adapt to these changes.

Quotes About Trading by William O’Neil

The moral of the story is: never argue with the market. Your health and peace of mind are always more important than any stock.

The fastest way to take a bath in the stock market is to try to prove that you are right, and the market is wrong.

The whole secret to winning in the stock market is not to be right all the time, but to lose the least amount possible when you’re wrong.

A great trader once noted there are only two emotions in the market: hope and fear. The only problem is we hope when we should fear, and we fear when we should hope.

Quotes About Trading by David Ryan

The single most important advice I can give anybody is: Learn from your mistakes. That is the only way to become a successful trader.

My percentage of winner is only about 50/50, because I cut my losers very quickly. The maximum loss I allow is 7%, and usually I am out of a losing stock a lot quicker. I make my money on the few stocks a year that double and triple in price. The profits in those trades easily makes up for all the small losers.

Action is the key! Because when we take action, we get a result; it might not always be the result we want but nevertheless it’s a result, something we can learn from.  

Quotes About Trading by Michael Marcus

Always bet less than 5 percent of your money on any one idea. That way you can be wrong more than twenty times; it will take you a long time to lose your money.

Being a successful trader takes courage: the courage to try, the courage to fail, the courage to succeed, and the courage to keep on going when the going gets tough.

I think to be in the upper echelon of successful traders requires an innate skill, a gift. It’s just like being a great violinist. But to be a competent trader and make money is a skill you can learn.

Perhaps the most important rule is to hold on to your winners and cut your losers. Both are equally important. If you don’t stay with your winners, you are not going to be able to pay for the losers.

Quotes About Trading by Bruce Kovner

If you personalize losses, you can’t trade.

Michael Marcus taught me one other thing that is absolutely critical: You have to be willing to make mistakes regularly; there is nothing wrong with it. Michael taught me about making your best judgment, being wrong, making your next best judgment, being wrong, making your third best judgment, and then doubling your money.

Novice traders trade 5 to 10 times too big. They are taking 5 to 10% risks on a trade they should be taking 1 to 2 percent risks.

Place your stops at a point that, if reached, will reasonably indicate that the trade is wrong, not at a point determined primarily by the maximum dollar amount you are willing to lose.

Risk management is the most important thing to be well understood.

Quotes About Trading by Gary Bielfeldt

You need discipline, patience, and courage. You must have a willingness to lose, but a strong desire to win.

Quotes About Trading by Marty “Buzzy” Schwartz

I try not to go against the moving averages; it is self-destructive.

My biggest losses have always followed my largest profits.

The sole objective of trading is not to prove you’re right, but to hear the cash register ring.

If you have a game plan prepared ahead of time, it can help you find courage in the heat of the battle.

Before taking a position, always know the amount you are willing to lose.

Quotes About Trading by Jeff Bezos

If you never want to be criticized, for goodness’ sake don’t do anything new.

My view is there’s no bad time to innovate.

The good news for shareowners is that a single big winning bet can more than cover the cost of many losers.

Patience, persistence, and obsessive attention to detail.

When the world changes around you and when it changes against you, what used to be a tail wind is now a headwind, you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining isn’t a strategy.

Quotes About Trading by James B. Rogers

If anybody laughs at your idea, view it as a sign of potential success!

Nearly every time I strayed from the herd, I’ve made a lot of money. Wandering away from the action is the way to find the new action.

There is nothing better than having to struggle and make your own way.

Do not worry about failure, I would tell them. Do not worry about making mistakes in life. It is good to lose money, to go broke at least once, and preferably twice. But if you are going to do it, do it early in your career. It is better to go bust when you are talking about $20,000 than when you are talking about $20 million. Do it early, and it is not the end of the world.

Money is the lance, not the grail.

Quotes About Trading by Brian Gelber

I instinctively trade smaller and sometimes I just take a break. It is a good habit to wipe the slate clean and start fresh.

Most traders who fail have large egos and can’t admit that they are wrong. Even those who are willing to admit that they are wrong early in their careers can’t admit it later on. Also, some traders fail because they are too worried about losing.

Quotes About Trading by Tony Saliba

Clear thinking, ability to stay focused, and extreme discipline. Discipline is number one: Take a theory and stick with it. But you also have to be open-minded enough to switch tracks if you feel that your theory has been proven wrong. You have to be able to say, “My method worked for this type of market, but we are not in that type of market anymore.”

Always respect the marketplace. Never take anything for granted. Do your homework. Recap the day. Figure out what you did right and what you did wrong. That is one part of the homework; the other part is projective. What do I want to happen tomorrow? What happens if the opposite occurs? What happens if nothing happens? Think through all the “what-ifs.” Anticipate and plan, rather than react.

Quotes About Trading by Bill Lipschuta

If most traders would learn to sit on their hands 50 percent of the time, they would make a lot more money. I don’t think you can consistently be a winning trader if you’re banking on being right more than 50 percent of the time. You have to figure out how to make money being right only 20 to 30 percent of the time.

Conclusion about these quotes about stock market traders and trading

Use these words whenever you need a boost or guidance through a trading challenge… share the ones that particularly resonate with you and display them somewhere prominent, so you have a little inspiration on hand!

Remember you’re only one system away!

Adrian