Give me a stock clerk with a goal and I'll give you a man who will make history. Give me a man with no goals and I'll give you a stock clerk. --J.C. Penney -------------- Happiness is a stock that doubles in a year. --Ira U. Cobleigh -------------- When will the market bottom? Frankly, when investors stop asking the question. --Richard Bernstein Merrill Lynch Chief U.S. Strategist ------------- Remember, I am neither a bear nor a bull, I am an agnostic opportunist. I want to make money short- and long-term. I want to find good situations and exploit them. We are all wrong so often that it amazes me that we can have any conviction at all over the direction of things to come. But we must. James Cramer ------------ Think like a guerrilla warrior. We wish to fight on the side of the market that is winning, not wasting our time and capital on futile efforts to gain fame by buying the lows or selling the highs of some market movement. Our duty is to earn profits by fighting alongside the winning forces. If neither side is winning, then we don't need to fight at all. Markets form their tops in violence; markets form their lows in quiet conditions. Richard Rhodes ----------- The deepest secret for the trader is to subordinate his will to the will of the market. The market is truth as it reflects all forces that bear upon it. As long as he recognizes this he is safe. When he ignores this, he is lost and doomed. When the ship starts to sink, don't pray - jump Lose your opinion - not your money. Anon ======== Josh
The key to understanding derivatives is a deeper understanding of all that's underlying. Morgan Stanley Dean Witter advertisement in Derivatives Strategy, October, 1997, p. 15 ------------------------ It's not like I'm some junk bond. I'm a triple-A bond that produces high yields. You know what you're getting with this bond. It's safe and its returns ar astonomical. Bruce Smith, Defensive lineman, Buffalo Bills ------------------------- The Wall Street Journal, December 31, 1997, p. B6 You're into derivatives whether you like it or not. Your adjustable rate mortgage is a derivative. You got a deal on a loan that was cheaper at any time than a fixed-rate mortgage. In return you're taking a risk. Your risk is that the amount of interest you'll pay in the future will be decided from a formula involving the prime rate, T-bills, and the chairman of Chase Manhattan's boxer shorts waistband size. In this case, the underlying commodity is banker fat. P. J. O'Rourke Eat the Rich 1998, p. 26 -------------------------- Anytime is a good time to invest in the stock market . . . Whether the stock market is breaking new records or laying an egg, today is still the best time to invest. Jim Jorgensen Money Talks Rosalie Maggio, 1998, p. 74 --------------------------- Frank, let me make this real clear to you. I don't like ordering my food in foreign languages, and I wouldn't know a damned stock option if it jumped up and clamped me right on the balls . . . Where you're going, the only option will be top or bottom bunk. David Baldacci Total Control 1997, p. 681 ---------------------------- Family is more than a concept. I have kids, not derivatives. My weekends are sacred. I came into this life with nothing. I don't intend to leave the same way. Advertisement for Mass Mutual Financial Group Wall Street Journal, May 26, 2000 --------------------------- The nice thing about working on Wall Street as opposed to in academic life is that when you lack inspiration you can do lots of useful things that require only time, not genius. Emanuel Derman The Journal of Derivatives, Winter 2000, p. 61 ---------------------------- You can think of a derivative as a mixture of its consituent underliers much as a cake is a mixture of eggs, flour, and milk in carefully specified proportions. The derivative's model provides a recipe for the mixture, one whose ingredients' quantities vary with time. Emanuel Derman Risk, July, 2001, p. 48. ----------------------------- . . . Wall Street relies on "stock analysts." These are people who do research on companies and then, no matter what they find, even if the company has burned to the ground, enthusiastically recommend that investors buy the stock. They are just a bunch of cockeyed optimists, those stock analysts. When the Titanic was in its death throes, with the propellers sticking straight up into the air, there was a stock analyst clinging to the railing asking people around him where he could buy a ticket for the return trip. Dave Barry February 3, 2002 ----------------------------- Enron stock was rated as 'Can't Miss' until it became clear that the company was in desperate trouble, at which point analysts lowered the rating to 'Sure Thing.' Only when Enron went completely under did a few bold analysts demote its stock to the lowest possible Wall Street analyst rating, 'Hot Buy.' Dave Barry February 3, 2002 ================ Josh
By Will Rogers: " Don't gamble; take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don't go up, don't buy it. " Doug S
Another, but I don't know the author: How do you make a small fortune in stock market. Start with a large fortune.
For the privileged few who own seats on a stock or derivatives exchange, the opportunities abound. Anon -------------------- If NASA's Mission Control were run by the boys from Animal House, it would look a lot like the Chicago Board Options Exchange. Ray Dean Mize "Never Ever Lose Big" American Way, January 15, 1993 ---------------------- The Wall Street Journal, March 16, 1983 The word âseat' is actually an irony, because when you finally sit down to sign the contract, it's probably the last time you're off your feet. Laura Pedersen Play Money, 1991, p. 176 ---------------------- Futures exchanges are a little like airlines. Everybody wants one as a matter of national pride, even if nobody knows how to run it or wants to use it. Anonymous London observer Risk, September, 1995, p. 87 --------------------- An exchange floor is a crucible of ideas, markets, events. Eventually ideas sprout from that for improving a market or for whole new markets. Without ideas and the interchange of ideas, you're never going to get an innovative process to work. Leo Melamed Escape to the Futures, 1995 Futures, October, 1996, p. 16 --------------------- As night follows day, exchanges have to merge. Anyone who doesn't think so has their head in the sand. Anonymous Australian equity and futures broker AsiaRisk, April, 1999, p. 10. --------------------- Looking down upon the London Metal Exchange's (LME) arcane trading "ring" is something akin to viewing a sacred copy of that old Led Zeppelin album with the embedded cardboard disc that you can spin to change the look of the cover. Futures, August, 2001, p. 78. -------------------- You pay $250,000 for a seat, but you can't sit down. J. M. Mueller ---------------------- Josh
Being a member of an exchange entitles one to spend all of one's daily hours engaged in a form of financial combat. The trading floor of an exchange is an environment wherein a higher concentration of people are subjected to more incomplete information bits flying around than anywhere else. Frederick Koenig Rumors in the Marketplace, 1985, p. 159 ---------------- I've seen the future. It uses hand signals, at least for now. President George Bush at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange December 10, 1991 ---------------- There are no friends in the pit. And you can quote me. You do not take prisoners in here. Anonymous gold trader Esquire, January, 1981 ----------------- They knocked me down, knocked off my glasses and stepped all over me. Mike Weinberg Esquire, January, 1981, p. 35 ---------------- When older traders look across that floor, they see the bodies of ghosts stacked six feet deep. Ray Dean Mize "Never Ever Lose Big" American Way, January 15, 1993, p. 54 ---------------- He got hit sideways in the pit, his head jerked and he's out with a fractured vertebra. His doctor said he can't come back to the trade floor. Michael Wilner, NYMEX Board Member The Wall Street Journal, March 19, 1993, p. A1 ---------------- You get some guy standing next to you with gum in his mouth screaming, "Buy seven at 70," and he spits all over you. The first thing I do when I get off the floor is go the bathroom and wash my hands, my face, my neck. I don't want to go home and kiss my kids until I've washed up. William Greenspan, stock index futures trader The Wall Street Journal, March 19, 1993, p. A1 ---------------- There was absolute physical mayhem. It looked like a kind of tribal ritual, almost a traditional circle dance. Sabrina Peck The Wall Street Journal, June 15, 1995, p. B1 ========= Josh
...small fish will turn into dolphins so will the sharks so will the sharks because it has to be so. Rudolf Rimmel, baltic poet