Robert A. Heinlein Quotes

The most important rule is to play great defense, not great offense. Everyday I assume every position I have is wrong. I know where my stop risk points are going to be. I do that so I can define my maximum drawdown. Hopefully, I spend the rest of the day enjoying positions that are going in my direction. If they are going against me, then I have a game plan for getting out.

Everything involves a risk. No risk, no reward.

Rarely is it possible to study all of the instructions to a game before beginning to play, or to memorize the manual before turning on the computer. The excitement of improvisation lies not only in the risk of being involved but in the new ideas, as heady as the adrenaline of performance, that seems to come from nowhere.

I am interested in risk, in art as well as in the realm of politics.

All of life is the management of risk, not its elimination.

I know many members of our community steer clear of Wall Street because of the perception that the stock market is risky, but I am convinced the biggest risk of all is not taking one.

Not taking a risk is a risk. That's how I see it.

As an adventurer...I try to protect against the downside. I make sure I have covered as many eventualities as I can. In the end, you have to take calculated risks; otherwise you're going to sit in mothballs all day and do nothing.

One doesn't accept bad challenges. Part of it is always the risk-taking without seeing that the risks are rational and the rewards are commensurate.. are more than commensurate.. with the risks.

And then at the end of the day, the most important thing is how good are you at risk control. Ninety-percent of any great trader is going to be the risk control.

The cost of assessing risk is now often greater than the cost of failing.

We have no future because our present is too volatile. We have only risk management. The spinning of the given moment's scenarios. Pattern recognition.

I'm a risk manager, but I'm also a risk taker.

By definition, risk-takers often fail. So do morons. In practice it's difficult to sort them out.

There is the risk you cannot afford to take, and there is the risk you cannot afford not to take.

Risk is the price you pay for opportunity.

What we have found over the years in the marketplace is that derivatives have been an extraordinarily useful vehicle to transfer risk from those who shouldn't be taking it to those who are willing to and are capable of doing so.

Those who play a safe game die very safely.

Risk always looks different when you're beating the system than when you've been beaten.

You never win any games you don't play.

Essentially, not only do we believe in this myth of 'de-risking', but it has become the one overriding goal; de-risking above growth, de-risking above innovation, de-risking above everything else. And we've reached the point where the Fed is using $70 Billion a month to 'de-risk' a largely insolvent banking system. And this can only end badly. The idea that you can do capitalism without risk is ridiculous on its face.

Indeed, better risk management may be the only truly necessary element of success in banking.

Risk managers and investment bankers and actually, all kinds of investors took on more risk than they expected. So there was a failure of risk management. There was a failure to recognize how much risk there was in some of these securities that people bought.

It's important to take risks.