Barry Ritholtz Quotes

Thoughtless risks are destructive, of course, but perhaps even more wasteful is thoughtless caution which prompts inaction and promotes failure to seize opportunity.

The effort invested in 'getting it right' should be commensurate with the importance of the decision.

There is a cost to every decision, and whether or not you impose a public health order has costs to industry and the public.

If you're too methodical, too fearful, you're not going to win. But the clever thing is to make the calculation correctly about where and when to go over the top. You've got to know when to push it and when to come back.

I will take the lead in turning risks into opportunities.

In strategic decisions, I'd be really concerned about overconfidence.

Armchair generals assume that nations decide on their foreign policy objectives and then subordinate everything else to achieving them. Life is more complicated. Threats, opportunities and risks are always uncertain, but the economic costs of maximum preparedness are definite.

Don’t ignore planning for unlikely events. Over long periods of time the highly improbable gets more probable to occur at least once.

When a government faces an evil that might be avoided, the usual pattern is to first debate whether or not the evil is real or imagined; then determine how evil it really is; then is it an appropriate function of government to avoid it? Then what are the alternative ways to avoid it? Then what are the costs to avoid it? And finally, is the benefit of avoiding the evil worth the cost? In those cases where it is, it is by this time too late to avoid the evil and discussions shift to ameliorating the evil.

I'm not going to risk our precious military resources on an ineffective, unproductive mission.

My view was that if you're going to make a mistake in your predictions, make sure you make them the right way. Don't put yourself into a situation where, in fact, you say you're going to do something, and then all of a sudden you can't.

I'm the CEO; I'm the one who should be looking out for risk.

Every good businessman or woman carefully analyzes all the available facts before making a decision.

I can't ever remember being struck by lightning when making a big decision. It's always about taking in more and more data points and making tack adjustments as you figure it out. I call customers, suppliers, industry analysts and try to get as much information as possible.

The decision to put American lives at risk is a decision that has a very high hurdle to pass.

Father was bold, and Mother was cautious. They never shouted at each other but argued constantly about strategy, and they taught me very early that before taking big risks, one must carefully figure the odds.

We necessarily operate in an environment in which there's a great deal of uncertainty. In such an environment, it makes sense to use a risk-management approach to identify and avoid the big mistakes. That's one reason I favor a cautious approach.

You have to be just as mistrustful of straightforward rationality in business as you do of a uniquely gut approach.

Managers can make themselves look strong by selling or dropping players, but if the move doesn't work, the choice looks flawed.

I've always prided myself on doing what really was best for business.

This is something that baffles me about managers: if you know the formation that you will revert to if you are in trouble, why not start with it?

I'm totally comfortable with taking some risk, but as long as it's doctrinated in something that makes sense.

I will take less risks. When the options aren't appearing, I will clear it into the stands or play a long ball up front.

Being a Navy SEAL and sniper taught me all about risk management. Take away all the risk variables under your control and reduce it to an acceptable level. The same fundamentals apply in business.

When something becomes a business, 50% of your decisions are what you have to do and not what you want to do.