Zurich Axioms Quotes

Adventure is what makes life worth living, and the way to have an adventure is to expose yourself to risk.

The trick, he said over and over again in any number of contexts, is to disregard what everybody tells you until you have thought it through for yourself.

By diversifying, you become a juggler trying to keep too many balls in the air all at once.

Always take your profit too soon.

Worry is not a sickness but a sign of health. If you are not worried, you are not risking enough.

Chaos is not dangerous until it begins to look orderly.

the Zurich Axioms are about the world of money, and that is a world of human events. Human events absolutely cannot be predicted, by any method, by anybody. One of the traps money-world prophets fall into is that they forget they are dealing with human behavior.

The fact is, nobody has the faintest idea of what is going to happen next year, next week, or even tomorrow. If you hope to get anywhere as a speculator, you must get out of the habit of listening to forecasts. It is of the utmost importance that you never take economists, market advisers, or other financial oracles seriously.

Of course, [risk] is a two-way street. But look at it this way. As an ordinary tax-hounded, inflation-raddled income earner, carrying much of the rest of the world on your back, you are in pretty sorry financial state anyhow.

To make any kind of gain in life – a gain of wealth, personal stature, whatever you define as “gain” – you must place some of your material and/or emotional capital at risk. You must make a commitment of money, time, love, something. That is the law of the universe.

In speculation, you should put your money into ventures that genuinely attract you, and only those.

There are some situations in human life, it is true, in which it may seem wiser to wait out bad times. But that is seldom a wise course where your money is concerned. If you let it get stuck in a bad venture, and if the problems last, you can go for years without having the use of that money. It’s locked up when, instead, it should be out chasing gains for you in other, livelier ventures.

Except in such unusual circumstances, get in the habit of selling too soon. And when you’ve sold, don’t torment yourself if the winning set continues without you. In all likelihood it won’t continue long. If it does, console yourself by thinking of all the times when selling too soon preserved gains you would otherwise have lost.

The willingness to abandon is usually the more trustworthy response. If you don’t sense or can’t cultivate this willingness in yourself, speculation of any kind could be difficult for you, and speculation on margin could be disastrous

Knowing how to get out of a bad situation may be the rarest of all speculative gifts.

If they wanted less, they’d go home with more”, he would say. That was his own axiom on greed.

Stock speculators are always doing that and are always working themselves into frenzies over it. Such a frenzy can cloud one’s judgment to a hazardous degree.

Racetracks close at the end of the day. Once in a great while, a stock market venture of yours might end when a company in which you’ve invested is absorbed by a bigger company and passes out of existence. But most of the time you will be required to call your own endings.

One excellent way to reinforce the ‘ending’ feeling is to rig up some kind of reward for yourself.

There are things that can be predicted. We know precisely when the sun is going to come up each morning, for instance. Tide tables are prepared months ahead. The free calendar I get each January from the bank says what the moon’s phases will be throughout the twelve months ahead. Weather forecasts are less precise but still are reasonably trustworthy and getting more so. The reason why such things can be predicted, and why the predictions can be trusted, is that they are physical events. But the Zurich Axioms are about the world of money, and that is a world of human events. Human events absolutely cannot be predicted, by any method, by anybody.

You tend to take it for granted, especially if it came to you rather slowly through the year rather than all at once. Instead of saying, “Hey, wow, I’ve doubled my money!” or “Hey, look at this, I’ve got a grand I didn’t have before!” you feel as though you have always had this much wealth.

Why do we go on listening to economic prophets when they plainly know no more about the future than you or I?

Economists, market advisers, political oracles, and clairvoyants all know this basic rule by heart: if you can’t forecast right, forecast often.

Nostradamus wasn’t often right, but he sure was often.

You may be amazed at how tough you can become with a little practice – and that will be an extra reward of the risk-taker’s way of life.

The Axioms are about speculation, not psychological self-help, and therefore they have no advice to offer on how you overcome these obstacles. That is an internal and individual process; the how is probably different for each of us.

Always remember that you are dealing with chaos and conduct your affairs accordingly. As the Axiom says, chaos is not dangerous until it begins to look orderly.

Well, now, kid, I’ll tell you”, Livermore said. “Every occupation has its aches and pains. If you keep bees, you get stung. Me, I get worried. It’s either that or stay poor. If I’ve got a choice between worried and poor, I’ll take worried anytime.

The fact is, no formula that ignores luck’s dominant role can ever be trusted. This is the great, liberating truth of the Fifth Axiom.

So many people were basing decisions on Granville’s forecasts in the early 1980s that when he said something was going to happen, it happened because they believed it would. That is, when he said the market would go down, the prediction scared buyers out of the market – and lo, it went down. This happened early in 1981, when Granville told his disciples to sell everything. The day after this famous warning was issued, the stock market fell out of bed – 23 points on the Dow. All of Wall Street said ooh and ah. What a powerful prophet was this Granville! The plunge was brief but impressive while it lasted.

Am I making this decision because it’s smart or because a majority says it’s smart?