Quotes on Losses

You know, we make mistakes. Some go from 12 to 10 and we sell them. Some go from 20 to nothing. In a 10-year period, you are going to have one or two that go from 20 to nothing. If you have more, it is bad.

I think I am safe in asserting that the margin trader, speculator, gambler, or whatever you choose to designate the average man who goes to Wall Street after easy money, does not lose money when he sells. He loses it when he buys!

In the beginning of a stock market boom it is ever the "dear public," the fleecy lambs, the most guileless victims, who make the most money. They really do not know when to stop winning, and so in the end they lose profit and principal.

Fortunes are made and lost by thousands of men in the stock market; they are made and kept by a few dozen.

People, it turns out, are not that averse to risk. For many reasons, they are not opposed to risk, but they are opposed to losing and the possibility of loss plays a very significant part in their decision.

One of the major differences between behavioral economics and standard economics is that, in standard economics, the individual agent is supposed to be driven or motivated by the utility of future wealth and discounted future wealth and present wealth. In behavioral economics, agents are supposed to be motivated by something else: gains and losses.

You lose money fast in the stock market. You can't make it fast.

Neither regulation nor memory is a perfect protection against the will to delude one's self or others. If people are sufficiently persuaded of their own wizardry or that of others, they and their money will be separated.

I would rather sustain the penalties resulting from over-conservatism than face the consequences of error, perhaps with permanent capital loss, resulting from the adoption of a "New Era" philosophy where trees really do grow to the sky.

Just because something is cheap does not mean it is not going to go down.

I am willing to trade the pains (forget about the pleasures) of substantial short term variance in exchange for maximization of long term performance. However, I am not willing to incur risk of substantial permanent capital loss in seeking to better long term performance.

I will not abandon a previous approach whose logic I understand even though it may mean foregoing large and apparently easy, profits to embrace an approach which I don’t fully understand, have not practiced successfully and which, possibly, could lead to substantial permanent loss of capital.

The first rule of an investment is: Don’t lose. And the second rule of investment is: Don't forget the first rule. And that's all the rules there are.

One of my life principles is that the only way you can live life is by dealing with what is, and not with what might have been. So that's the way I've tried to deal with setbacks.

Risk is how much can you lose and what are the chances of losing it.

If you don't like to lose money and it affects your judgment, don't buy things that can go down a great deal.

You have to say to yourself, "If I'm right, how much am I going to make? If I'm wrong, how much am I going to lose?" That's the risk/reward ratio.

A lot of my stocks don't work. The beauty of the stock market is that if you are wrong, if you put $1,000 up, all you lose is $1,000. I have proven that many times.

Some stocks go up 20-30 percent and they get rid of it and hold onto the dogs. And it's sort of like watering the weeds and cutting out the flowers. You want to let the winners run.

For some reason, you lose money rapidly in the stock market but don't make it rapidly.

You can lose money very fast, in two months, but you very rarely make money very fast in the stock market. When I look back, my great stocks took a long time to work out.

The most important lesson an investor can learn is to be dispassionate when confronted by unexpected and unfavorable outcomes.

If you're lucky enough to have one golden egg in your portfolio, it may not matter if you have a couple of rotten ones in there with it.

If a stock has gone sideways for a couple of years, and the fundamentals are decent, and you can find something new that's positive in the company, then if you're wrong, the stock will probably continue to go sideways, and you won't lose a lot of money. But if you're right, that stock is going north.

One of the oldest sayings on Wall Street is "Let your winners run, and cut your losers." It's easy to make a mistake and do the opposite, pulling out the flowers and watering the weeds.

Far more money has been lost by investors preparing for corrections or trying to anticipate corrections than has been lost in corrections themselves.

There's a psychological benefit to tossing the bums out: The names disappear from the monthly brokerage statements; we're no longer reminded of our mistakes.

If you cut enough losses, sooner or later there's nothing left to cut.

A correction is nothing more than a Wall Street euphemism for losing a lot of money very rapidly.

One or two good stocks can make up for lots of losers, and produce superior results.

To lose money is the conventional penalty for bad judgment in speculation.

I have this motto in life as well as in business, which is: every day, I'm lucky if I have learned something new and I'm doubly lucky if it hadn't cost too much.

It is the sovereign privilege of a free citizen to lose his money precisely as he pleases.

No method guarantees you're not going to lose your shirt. I've done that many times. I've had stocks go from $11 to seven cents.

My experience teaches me that by far the largest losses have been sustained by investors through buying securities of inferior quality under favorable general conditions.

Real investment risk is measured not by the percent that a stock may decline in price in relation to the general market in a given period, but by the danger of a loss of quality and earning power through economic changes or deterioration in management.

Probably the largest aggregate losses are suffered by people who invest overenthusiastically in a basically sound company.

The typical experience of the speculator is one of temporary profit and ultimate loss.