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.
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.
More music has been written about money than about love - and often, with a happier ending and a catchier tune.
He that cannot abide a bad market deserves not a good one.
Fortune is like the market, where many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall.
A fool and is money are soon parted. What I want to know is how they got together in the first place.
There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted but now it happens to everybody.
Mark's Law of Monetary Equalization: A fool and your money are soon partners.
Some gotta win and some gotta lose.
The cares of gain are threefold: the struggle of getting, the frenzy of increasing, the horror of losing.
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.
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.
I'd say that Proctor and Gamble did what their name says, they proctored and gambled. And now they're complaining.
A rogue trader is someone who loses money. What do you call someone who makes money? Sir' or boss.'
The market will weed out financially incapable rogue players.
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.
How do you make a small fortune in commodities?" Start with a large fortune.
He who makes haste to be rich will not go unpunished.
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.
It's the stuff that dreams are made of.
You can make a lot more money being lucky than being smart.
Nothing stings more sharply than the loss of money.
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.
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.
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.
You have to love to lose money and hate to make money to be successful. There's no other way.
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
Last updated: January 9, 2011