TRADING

The floor taught me everything I needed to know about trading. You learned fast or you lost fast. There was no in-between.

The goal is not to be right. The goal is to make money when you are right and lose a little when you are wrong. The math is simple. Execution is hard.

The biggest mistake I made in 2017 was not taking profits. Do not repeat my mistake.

Most people don't fail because of the market. They fail because of their own emotions.

Never risk more than 2% of your portfolio on a single trade. That rule has saved me more than any stock pick.

The best traders I've seen share one thing — they don't fall in love with positions. A stock doesn't know you own it.

The worst thing you can do is fall in love with a position. The moment you start rationalising why it should come back, you've stopped being a trader.

The market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient — but in macro, the patient still have to be fast.

I think the best traders are extremely humble. They know that they don't know everything, and they are very aware of the limits of their own knowledge.

Every trader has strengths and weakness. Some are good holders of winners, but may hold their losers a little too long. Others may cut their winners a little short, but are quick to take their losses. As long as you stick to your own style, you get the good and bad in your own approach.

I was a day trader for 10 years before starting Zerodha. I lost money, I made money, I understood exactly what retail traders needed because I was one of them.

Coinbase made crypto easy for beginners. We made it powerful for experts. Both approaches are valid — we just chose the harder market.

The best trade is the one where the other side doesn't even know you're there.

A man must believe in himself and his judgment if he expects to make a living at this game.

I know from experience that nobody can give me a tip or a series of tips that will make more money for me than my own judgment.

The edge isn't in being smart. It's in being disciplined about expected value.

The market is never wrong — opinions often are.

It is not the thinking that makes big money, it is the sitting.

Every decision is a probability. Every trade is a bet. The only question is whether the odds are in your favor.

When I first brought a computer to the trading floor, they told me I was cheating. I was just faster.

Currency markets are the purest market in the world. There is no CEO to charm and no earnings to manipulate. Either you are right or you lose.

Models tell you what should happen. Markets tell you what is happening. When they disagree, trust the market.

I'd rather take a big loss on a trade I understood than a small loss on one I didn't.

Discipline beats talent. I've seen brilliant traders blow up because they couldn't follow their own rules when it mattered.

Position sizing is everything. Being right on direction means nothing if you’re sized wrong.

You have to be willing to make mistakes regularly. The trick is to make small mistakes and ride big winners.

The best trades are the ones where the fundamentals and the technicals are both screaming the same thing.

I say my price targets publicly because I believe in accountability. If I’m wrong, everyone can see it. That makes me more careful.

I keep my losses small and let my profits run. That is the whole secret.

Trading is a learnable skill. The idea that great traders are born, not made, is just wrong.

I always say you could publish my trading rules in the newspaper and no one would follow them. The key is consistency and discipline.

When you have a system, the hardest part is following it when it's losing.

I never argue with the tape. If a stock goes down, I get out.

We are not a mining company. We are a trading company that happens to own mines. The difference matters enormously.

Your losses will always tell you more than your wins. Study them. They are your real education.

The stock market is not a casino, but if you move in and out of stocks every time they move a point or two, the market will be a casino.

The key to trading success is emotional discipline. If intelligence were the key, there would be a lot more people making money trading.

Amateurs go broke taking large losses. Professionals make their fortune by taking small ones.

What every successful trader has in common is not a methodology but a discipline. They all follow their system without deviation.

Risk management is the most important thing to be well understood. Undertrade, undertrade, undertrade.

Making money is just a means of keeping score, to know how well you are doing as a trader and investor.

We trade the ripples, not the waves.

Trading is injurious to your wealth. If you are smoking you may die in 20-30 years whereas by trading, this may happen the very next day.

I started 2017 with $583 in my account. The audited track record is the only reason anyone should believe a word I say.