EMOTIONS
“Emotion is your enemy. Intensity makes your stronger. Emotionalism makes you weaker… Good judgement, common sense, and reason all fly out the window when emotions kick down your door.” Coach John Wooden
“The investor cannot enter the arena of the stock market with any real hope of success unless he is armed with mental weapons that distinguish him in kind—not in a fancied superior degree—from the trading public.” Benjamin Graham, The Intelligent Investor 1949
“The game of speculation is the most uniformly fascinating game in the world. But it is not a game for the stupid, the mentally lazy, the man of inferior emotional balance, nor for the get-rich- quick adventurer. They will die poor.” Jesse Livermore 1940
“American business, really, has never let investors down as a group, but investors have done themselves in quite frequently.” Warren Buffett
“Emotion is one of the investor's greatest enemies.” Howard Marks
"It’s an easy game, if you can control your emotions." Warren Buffett
“A lot of people with high IQs are terrible investors because they’ve got terrible temperaments. You need to keep raw irrational emotion under control.” Charles Munger
“I don’t think investing is that hard. The hard part of investing, as Warren Buffett said is temperament, you need to have the right temperament.” Chris Hohn
“Investing in public markets isn’t just about intelligence and being a good stock picker. It’s a lot about temperament.” Munib Islam
“Never mark emotions to market.” Nick Sleep
“Emotions are the enemy of rational decision-making.” Todd Combs
"Emotions are universal and there is no stopping the flow of seasons." Adam Smith, The Money Game
"There is one requirement that is absolute in money management, and you have already learned it with the first Irregular Rule: If you don't know who you are, this is an expensive place to find out. The requirement is emotional maturity. In short, you have to be able to handle any situation without losing your cool, or letting your emotions takeover. You must operate without anxiety." Adam Smith, The Money Game
"Those who seek to relate stock movements to the current statistics of business, or who ignore the strongly imaginative taint of stock operations, or who overlook the technical basis of advances and declines, must meet with disaster, because their judgement is based upon the humdrum of fact and figure in a game which is actually played in a third dimension of the emotions and a fourth dimension of dreams." Barnie Winkleman, 1932
"Good market work, I think, like successful psychiatry, has to work on emotional rapport. You can have no preconceived ideas. There are fundamentals in the marketplace, but the unexplored area is the emotional area." Adam Smith, The Money Game
“The investor’s chief problem – and even his worst enemy – is likely to be himself.” Ben Graham
”Most people get led astray by emotions in investing. They get led astray by being excessively careless and optimistic when they have big profits, and by getting excessively pessimistic and too cautious when they have big losses.” Sir John Templeton
"You also never want to be emotionally in a position where you pull the rug out from under yourself. You don’t want to let your own fears or emotions to cause you to sell at the wrong time." Warren Buffett
“Investing isn’t about beating others at their game. It’s about controlling yourself at your own game.” Ben Graham
“The single most important thing about trading — aside from the other single most important things — is learning emotional control. Discipline. Objectivity. The ability to confront error. The ability to see that what you’ve done is not correct and to adjust accordingly.” Bruce Kovner
"As investors, we need to come to grips with our emotional liabilities." Barton Biggs
“Look, I feel the emotion. Don't think I'm dispassionate. I feel the emotion. But I've learned through experience [to] just move on. I would say in action I'm extremely cold blooded, for an investor. But trust me, I'm feeling inside." Stanley Druckenmiller
“Mastery of your emotions is more important than the technical skills. Markets are a really expensive place to figure out who your are. You have to respect your emotions, they will reveal who you are under stress. Emotions will overwhelm your intellect, it’s a biological hack; it’s designed that way. You need to know how to handle them, read them and overcome them if required. There are a lot of unnatural actions in investing. When people are panicking you need to overcome that reptilian response.” Yen Liow
"Beyond a certain basic level, though, of skill .. your emotional make-up’s more important than some super high degree of skill." Warren Buffett
"An old and rather corny comedy line has it that the only part of an automobile that cannot be made foolproof by a safety device is the nut that holds the wheel. By much the same token, there are no safeguards that can protect the emotional investor from himself." J Paul Getty
"Your personal strengths will help determine your success as an investor. Before you begin studying companies for investment, study yourself." Roy Neuberger
"The real source of competitive advantage in investing is to have a better mental game." Adam Weiss
“Not being controlled by an emotion helps to see things at a higher level.” Ray Dalio
“Again let me say, the human side of every person is the greatest enemy of the average investor or speculator.” Jessie Livermore
“The greatest threat you face to your investment performance is from you.” Terry Smith
“Almost all the great investors I know are unemotional. Unemotionalism is one of the most important criteria for being a successful investor.” Howard Marks
“Trading on emotions is nearly always the wrong thing to do, especially for those investors who have carefully done their homework.” Glenn Greenberg
“The main obstacle lies in disentangling ourselves from our emotions.” Bernard Baruch
"Whether the times are good or bad, I would say the emotional quotient is more important than the intelligence quotient." Francisco Garcia Parames
“Our job is to rise above the emotion of the marketplace, and to remain focused on basic investing principles.” Chuck Akre
"Very few, if any, of us are wholly rational, that capacity compromised by mental shortcuts and biases - many subconscious - that impede the faculty of reasoning through to purely logical conclusions. If there is hope, it comes from knowing the enemy that lies within, so that, thus fortified, we can face the enemy without untrammelled by such emotions as greed or (later) fear." Frank Martin
“Time and time again, in every market cycle I have witnessed, the extremes of emotion always appear, even among experienced investors.” Michael Steinhardt
“It is a human frailty which we all possess in some degree that becomes the investor’s and speculator’s greatest enemy and will eventually, if not safeguarded, bring about his downfall. It is a human trait to be hopeful and equally so be fearful, but when you inject hope and fear into the business of speculation, you are faced with a very formidable hazard, because you are apt to get the two confused and in reverse positions.” Jessie Livermore
“Being human, we are our own worst enemy. Everything that goes on in the world and the market conspires to make people buy when things are going well and prices are high and sell when things are going badly and prices are low, and fighting that is the number one theme of success.” Howard Marks
“Unsuccessful investors are dominated by emotion.” Seth Klarman
“Most of the errors in our business are errors of emotion.” Howard Marks
“We’re pretty unemotional when we invest.” David Tepper
"In general, emotions should be left out of the investment process." Francois Rochon
“What makes the task of fact finding so difficult is that in the stock market the facts of any situation come to us through a curtain of human emotions.” Bernard Baruch
“Be prepared for the emotional side of this game. I don’t think anyone can fully express to you how emotionally demanding this business can be at times, and if you are not emotionally aligned for the game, it can be very painful.” Yen Liow
“Individuals who cannot master their emotions are ill-suited to profit from the investment process.” Ben Graham
“In speculation our emotions are constantly setting traps for our reasoning powers.” Bernard Baruch
“The emotional burden of trading is substantial; on any given day I could lose millions of dollars. If you personalise these losses, you can’t trade.” Bruce Kovner
“The biggest investing errors come not from factors that are informational or analytical, but from those that are psychological.” Howard Marks
“Mood or investor psychology is as important to markets as is information.” Leon Levy
“At one moment, the mood in one aspect of the market may be ebullient, while elsewhere it is morose; the entire market gets swept along by a tide of emotion. Intellectual measures often seen not to apply.” Leon Levy
“Why should the market be any more perfect than the very human emotions and calculations that drive it.” Leon Levy
"Investors assess information emotionally, creating price distortions that the astute and nimble can exploit." Ralph Wanger
"Healthy investor behaviour means being disciplined, patient and unemotional." Chris Davis
“If you’re emotional about investment you’re not going to do well.” Warren Buffett
"Be a disciplined rational investor. Follow logic and analysis rather than sales pitches, whims or emotions." Ed Thorp
"Maintaining a steady state of mind, whether we are in good times or bad, is the key to successful long-term investing." Christopher Browne
"Whether times are good or bad, I would say that the emotional quotient is more important than the intelligence quotient." Francisco Garcia Parames
"[Investing] It's about discipline and avoiding emotional response." Sam Zell
"Separate your analysis from your emotions. Especially during a difficult period, many investors become distraught, let their emotions dictate their investment decisions, and make decisions that are irrational and costly. By understanding your emotions and by understanding the nature of a difficult period, an investor can hope to organize and control his mind to think and act rationally." Ed Wachenheim
"I cry when I watch the Olympics. I am part of the one percent of the people in the movie theatre crying. So I'm an emotional person. But about investing, I'm not emotional. Emotion is a very bad thing to mix with investing." Bill Ackman
“Emotion lies dangerously close to the surface for most investors and can be particularly intense when market prices move dramatically in either direction.” Seth Klarman
"Your own psychology and ability to handle the emotional ups and downs of investing are likely to be important determinants of your long run investment success." William Browne
“I believe that uncontrolled basic emotions are the true and deadly enemy of the speculator; that hope, fear, and greed are always present, sitting on the edge of the psyche, waiting on the sidelines, waiting to jump into the action, plow into the game.” Jesse Livermore
"I try to stay as unemotional as possible when things go against me." Kevin Daly
"The important thing is to not get caught up in emotions -- knowing emotions exist but not getting caught up and being cold, hard and calculating on valuation -- that is the secret." Joel Greenblatt
"Over the years, I have learned to control my emotions, especially when the prices of some or all of our stocks are falling sharply." Ed Wachenheim
"You really have to ban emotion from your process." Chris Mittleman
"Most investors don’t receive the returns they should. Why? Human emotions." Chris Davis
"An important quality in my field is emotional stability." Warren Buffett
"Try not to let your emotions affect your judgement. Fear and greed are probably the worst emotions to have in connection with the purchase and sale of stocks." Walter Schloss
“Emotional mitigation – you’re trying to find some way to mitigate the emotional dimension which is constantly driving people to make incorrect decisions. Data that’s accumulating from behavioural finance substantiates the fact we are, by and large, horribly wired to be objective.” William Browne
"To be the person who steps onto the exchange floor in 1929 and says 'I buy', you have to be unemotional." Howard Marks
"Fear and greed, most notable among counterproductive emotions where money is the object of human desire, can and often do compromise the capacity for rational and orderly thought." Frank Martin
"There are very few people who have really beaten the market for more than a decade - and I have had the good fortune of knowing a decent percentage of them. My observation is that they all have an uncommon mental game - when things get tough and the chips are down, and most people stop doing what they are supposed to do because of greed or fear, this group manages to avoid the mental fog that plagues the majority." Adam Weiss
"It is critical not to get caught up in the emotions of the market." Marathon Asset Management
“Data is influential, but cortisol and dopamine are authoritative. And so much of what drives investing behavior is deeply ingrained personality and personal experience, not something that can necessarily be taught. The behavioral side of investing will always be more important than the analytical side because good behavior and no data can still do well, but tons of data mixed with poor behavior is a lit fuse.” Morgan Housel
"It’s a simple business.... It requires qualities of temperament way more than it requires qualities of intellect." Warren Buffett
"Why do experienced investors continue to make behavioural errors? Seth Klarman once said that "people don't consciously choose to invest with emotion - they simply can't help it". I agree. That's what makes investing so difficult for most people." Ed Wachenheim
"To master investing you need to master your emotions. You cannot get emotional in making investment decisions." Peter Lynch
"We will do our utmost to separate reason from emotion, relying on the former while striving to recognize the latter and hold it at bay." Seth Klarman
“One of the keys to successful investing is to either be unemotional or, at minimum, act like you are. The great investors I know behave in an unemotional fashion. Warren Buffett couldn’t care less, David Tepper couldn’t care less, and so forth. My own partner Bruce Karsh is very stalwart. But part of it is that we support each other at the bottom. It’s not easy.” Howard Marks
"You do have to have an emotional stability. You have to have sort of an inner peace about your decisions. Because it is a game where you get subjected to minute-by-minute stimuli, where people are offering opinions all the time... you do have to have sort of an emotional stability that will take you through almost anything. And then you’ll make good investment decisions over time." Warren Buffett
“I believe that investing is basically an intellectual exercise that is constantly being challenged by the emotions. The intellectual part of it is doable by people who are trained and have the experience to make investment decisions, and the way that we do it could probably be done by many other people. But if you do not have the discipline to deal with the emotional aspect of it, then you are going to have difficulties in this business.” David Polen
“The biggest risk to you as an investor is yourself and your own biases, your own misconceptions, your own behaviors that impact your returns as an investor. When people talk about risk, they talk about, what is the economy doing? What is the Fed going to do? What is the CEO of the company I own going to do? And those are all risks. I think they absolutely compare to the risks that you yourself pose to yourself as an investor. And for some people, that’s kind of a difficult realization, to know that you are maybe taking all these actions that hurt yourself. To me, I think it’s one of the most optimistic realizations in investing, because you can’t control what the economy’s going to do next. You can’t control what the Fed is going to do next. The only thing you can control in investing is your own behaviors. And when you realize that the one thing you can control is the thing that makes the biggest difference over time that, I think, is a pretty optimistic realization.” Morgan Housel
“You must supply the emotional discipline.” Warren Buffett
“In the psychology world, I think you have to understand all the biases that human emotions put in front of rational thoughts, and you have to be aware of those biases. You cannot remove the emotion, but you can choose to act beyond them.” Francois Rochon
“It isn’t the inability to see the future that cripples most efforts at investment. More often it’s emotion.” Howard Marks