Top 35 Ed Seykota Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The trend is your friend except at the end where it bends.”

— Ed Seykota

Featured in: Stock Market Quotes, Momentum Quotes

2. “The trading rules I live by are: 1. Cut losses. 2. Ride winners. 3. Keep bets small. 4. Follow the rules without question. 5. Know when to break the rules.”

— Ed Seykota

Featured in: Strategy Quotes, Financial Success Quotes, Performance Quotes, Practice Quotes

3. “If you can’t measure it, you probably can’t manage it. Things you measure tend to improve.”

— Ed Seykota

Featured in: Performance Quotes, Progress Quotes

4. “If you can’t take a small loss, sooner or later you will take the mother of all losses.”

— Ed Seykota

Featured in: Quotes About Money, Loss Quotes, Risk-Taking Quotes

5. “The elements of good trading are: 1, cutting losses. 2, cutting losses. And 3, cutting losses. If you can follow these three rules, you may have a chance.”

— Ed Seykota

Featured in: Strategy Quotes, Performance Quotes, Making Money Quotes, Loss Quotes

6. “Win or lose, everybody gets what they want out of the market. Some people seem to like to lose, so they win by losing money.”

— Ed Seykota

Featured in: Loss Quotes, Stock Market Quotes

7. “Risk no more than you can afford to lose, and also risk enough so that a win is meaningful.”

— Ed Seykota

Featured in: Quotes About Money, Risk-Taking Quotes

8. “A losing trader can do little to transform himself into a winning trader. A losing trader is not going to want to transform himself. That’s the kind of thing winning traders do.”

— Ed Seykota

Featured in: Stock Market Quotes

9. “It can be very expensive to try to convince the markets you are right.”

— Ed Seykota

Featured in: Financial Success Quotes

10. “If you want to know everything about the market, go to the beach. Push and pull your hands with the waves. Some are bigger waves, some are smaller. But if you try to push the wave out when it’s coming in, it’ll never happen. The market is always right.”

— Ed Seykota

Featured in: Financial Success Quotes

11. “I don’t predict a nonexisting future.”

— Ed Seykota

12. “It’s all about sticking to your plan and experiencing feelings as they arise. If you are unwilling to feel your feelings, the temptation is to avoid them by jumping off your system.”

— Ed Seykota

13. “There are old traders and there are bold traders, but there are very few old, bold traders.”

— Ed Seykota

14. “Trend following is an exercise in observing and responding to the ever-present moment of now.”

— Ed Seykota

Featured in: Momentum Quotes

15. “A lot of people would rather understand the market than make money.”

— Ed Seykota

Featured in: Making Money Quotes

16. “Traders and Surfers both have to deal with feelings of missing out on the small ones, until the big one comes along. They also have to deal with feelings of staying with the big one.”

— Ed Seykota

17. “Systems don’t need to be changed. The trick is for a trader to develop a system with which he is compatible.”

— Ed Seykota

18. “Trying to trade during a losing streak is emotionally devastating. Trying to play ‘catch up’ is lethal.”

— Ed Seykota

Featured in: Loss Quotes, Stock Market Quotes

19. “To avoid whipsaw losses, stop trading.”

— Ed Seykota

20. “Psychology motivates the quality of analysis and puts it to use. Psychology is the driver and analysis is the road map.”

— Ed Seykota

21. “The key to long-term survival and prosperity has a lot to do with the money management techniques incorporated into the technical system.”

— Ed Seykota

Featured in: Wealth Quotes

22. “Everybody gets what they want out of the market.”

— Ed Seykota

Featured in: Financial Success Quotes

23. “I turn bullish at the instant my buy stop is hit, and stay bullish until my sell stop is hit.”

— Ed Seykota

Featured in: Financial Success Quotes

24. “Working to anticipate the future can be a distraction from the important task of dealing with the present.”

— Ed Seykota

25. “The markets are the same now as they were five or ten years ago because they keep changing-just like they did then.”

— Ed Seykota

26. “My style is basically trend following, with some special pattern recognition and money management algorithms.”

— Ed Seykota

27. “I think that if people look deeply enough into their trading patterns, they find that, on balance, including all their goals, they are really getting what they want, even though they may not understand it or want to admit it.”

— Ed Seykota

28. “Losing a position is aggravating, whereas losing your nerve is devastating.”

— Ed Seykota

29. “Trends become more apparent as you step further away from the chart.”

— Ed Seykota

30. “Good traders trade. Good letter writers write letters.”

— Ed Seykota

31. “Dramatic and emotional trading experiences tend to be negative. Pride is a great banana peel, as are hope, fear, and greed. My biggest slip-ups occurred shortly after I got emotionally involved with positions.”

— Ed Seykota

32. “Luck plays an enormous role in trading success. Some people were lucky enough to be born smart, while others were even smarter and got born lucky.”

— Ed Seykota

33. “The biggest secret about success is that there isn’t any big secret about it, or if there is, then it’s a secret from me, too. The idea of searching for some secret for trading success misses the point.”

— Ed Seykota

34. “The idea of searching for some secret for trading success misses the point.”

— Ed Seykota

35. “Pyramiding instructions appear on dollar bills. Add smaller and smaller amounts on the way up. Keep your eye open at the top.”

— Ed Seykota

36. “Markets are fundamentally volatile. No way around it. Your problem is not in the math. There is no math to get you out of having to experience uncertainty.”

— Ed Seykota

37. “Fundamentals that you read about are typically useless as the market has already discounted the price, and I call them “funny-mentals”. However, if you catch on early, before others believe, you might have valuable “surprise-a-mentals”.”

— Ed Seykota

38. “It is a happy circumstance that when nature gives us true burning desires, she also gives us the means to satisfy them. Those who want to win and lack skill can get someone with skill to help them.”

— Ed Seykota

39. “I would add that I consider myself and how I do things as a kind of system which, by definition, I always follow.”

— Ed Seykota