DerivaQuote

Making Money (and Losing It)

The name of the game is making money or at least trying not to lose it. Losing gets in the news often. Unfortunately, people seem to forget about two things: for every loser, there's a winner and many of the losers are simply those who bought insurance against something that didn't happen.

The easiest job I have ever tackled in this world is that of making money. It is, in fact, almost as easy as losing it. Almost, but not quite.

H. L. Mencken
The Baltimore Sun, June 12, 1992

He laughed when I asked him if he had ever made a million in six months and said that he often makes a million in six days.

Donald R. Katz
"The Boys in the Pits"
Esquire, January, 1981, p. 35

More music has been written about money than about love - and often, with a happier ending and a catchier tune.

Katherine Neville
A Calculated Risk, 1992

He that cannot abide a bad market deserves not a good one.

John Ray
English Proverbs, 1678

Fortune is like the market, where many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall.

Francis Bacon
Of Delays, 1625

A fool and is money are soon parted. What I want to know is how they got together in the first place.

Cyril Fletcher
BBC radio program, May 28, 1969

There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted but now it happens to everybody.

Adlai Stevenson
Money Talks
Rosalie Maggio, 1998, p. 18

Mark's Law of Monetary Equalization: A fool and your money are soon partners.

Arthur Bloch
Money Talks
Rosalie Maggio, 1998, p. 18

Some gotta win and some gotta lose.

Danny O'Keefe
"Good Time Charley", 1972

The cares of gain are threefold: the struggle of getting, the frenzy of increasing, the horror of losing.

Anonymous
Mediations on Wall Street, 1940

There is a way to make a lot of money in the market; unfortunately it is the same way to lose a lot of money in the market.

Peter Passell and Leonard Rose
The Best, 1974

Those who invest in hedge funds like Granite are well-heeled speculators, willing to take very significant risks in pursuit of higher than usual profits. Where the minimum investment is $250 thousand or even as much as $1 million, are we really concerned that some of the rich high-rollers lose a bundle in the course of a market adjustment? Well, I, for one, have not shed any tears. And, my protective instincts are not stirred by the plaintive cries of ‘foul' from a giant manufacturer which walked eagerly into a highly speculative transaction with a huge bet and stayed with it while the market piled on the losses. By the same token, is anyone really concerned about the roulette player at Las Vegas who loses the farm? No! And, there is no evidence that gullible widows and orphans are playing the derivatives market unless they are very rich widows and orphans who should know what they are doing. And in that case, who cares.

John P. LaWare
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
American Bankers Association 1994 National Regulatory Compliance Conference
Washington, DC, June 13, 1994

I'd say that Proctor and Gamble did what their name says, they proctored and gambled. And now they're complaining.

Leo Melamed, Chief Executive Officer
Sakura Dellsher Inc.
Futures, December, 1994, p. 14

A rogue trader is someone who loses money. What do you call someone who makes money? ‘Sir' or ‘boss.'

Phillip McBryde Johnson
Pensions & Investments Symposium on Risk Management
December 5, 1995

The market will weed out financially incapable rogue players.

Juan Pujada, partner, Price Waterhouse
Risk, January, 1995

I'm always nervous when a guy makes a lot of money . . . I've seen guys do what I call calendar spreads on their wives . . . sell the old, buy the new. That's a bad sign.

Brad Rotter, money manager
Futures, November, 1994, p. 16

How do you make a small fortune in commodities?" Start with a large fortune.

Anonymous

He who makes haste to be rich will not go unpunished.

Proverbs 28:20

You're right Mr. Thatcher, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars next year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I'll have to close this place down - in 60 years.

Citizen Kane, 1941

It's the stuff that dreams are made of.

Sam Spade
The Maltese Falcon, 1930

You can make a lot more money being lucky than being smart.

Anonymous trader quoted in
God in the Pits: Confessions of a Commodities Trader
Mark Ritchie, 1990, p. 1

Nothing stings more sharply than the loss of money.

Titus Livius
c. AD 5

One Shanghai pit trader was sentenced to death last June for siphoning state funds to speculate on plywood futures, exceeding the exchange margin requirements and racking up losses of nearly 1 million yuan ($120,000) in the process.

Deborah Lamb
AsiaRisk, April, 1996, p. 26

The ultimate error is to put a ton of money with geniuses who 'never lose money.' When all hell breaks loose, those guys lose everything.

Jerry Parker, Chesapeake Capital
The Wall Street Journal, October 29, 1998, p. C1

Futures Contract: a contract to buy something later at a price agreed upon today; an agreement in which one party sells huge quantities of something he doesn't own to another party who hopes it will never be delivered, and where one party ends up with all the money.

John Rothchild
A Fool and His Money
1997, p. 250

You have to love to lose money and hate to make money to be successful. There's no other way.

Everett Klipp
Futures, May, 1999, p. 102.

I asked him, what is it you guys are doing at LTCM (Long-Term Capital Management), and Myron (Scholes) characterized it in that way of his. He said, well you know, one way is to think of us as a gigantic vacuum cleaner sucking up nickels from all over the world.

Merton Miller
Trillion Dollar Bet
NOVA, PBS, February 8, 2000

If you take care of your money, your money will take care of you.

Patti LaBelle
Interview on National Public Radio, Morning Edition
December 5, 2001

On Enron Web site: Most of the things we do have never been done before.
The most dramatic of those "things" involved turning a $90 per share blue-chip company into a 25 cent per share pile of dust.


Steve Zwick
Futures
January, 2002, pp. 66-67

 

This is the risk of the game. And we lost. So what?

Marshall Field, trustee
Chicago Art Institute
After $20 million of losses in hedge funds
The Wall Street Journal, February 1, 2002, p. A1

My investment philosophy has always been that victory in the long run accrues to the humble rather than to the bold.
 

Peter Bernstein
CFA Magazine
March/April 2004, p. 5

It's interesting that the industry has invented new ways to lose money when the old ways seemed to work just fine.

John Stumpf
CEO, Wells Fargo
November, 2007

 

 


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Last updated:  January 9, 2011