James Stockdale Quotes

As I have said before, the daily machinations of the stock market are like a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

In fact, of all hoodoos in Wall Street I think the resolve to induce the stock market to act as a fairy godmother is the busiest and most persistent.

Our systems are all go. At 9:30 Monday morning trading will resume on both markets, and the message will be given to criminals who foisted this on America that they lost.

I always said that if I wasn't studying psychopaths in prison, I'd do it at the stock exchange.

You have a class of investors and you have a class of speculators. The speculators historically haven't been big enough to cause the investors to doubt the long-term vision of stock.

Fundamentals make the market.

Diplomacy is really far less important than the stock movements within Russia.

Once again, stock markets have been threatened with extinction for almost 75 years, and I have found that stock markets are harder to kill than roaches.

I don’t care a damn about stocks and bonds, but I don’t want to see them go down the first day I am President.

Political reactions from Wall Street, whether they [are] right of wrong, could eventually influence the real economy.

Thanks, Mr. President. Nobody has complimented the stock exchange for a long while.

Markets are self-regulating only because some brave investors are prepared to bet against the market trend.

Most politicians want to be seen as leading the parade. Thus they act to make a good thing better, and when markets slip, they find ways to limit the economic freedom of others.

Nowhere does history indulge in repetitions so often or so uniformly as in Wall Street.

The occupation of the stock-jobber yields no new or useful product; consequently having no product of his own to give in exchange, he has no revenue to subsist upon, but what he contrives to make out of the unskillfulness or ill-fortune of gamesters like himself.

The best way to make money on Wall Street is to sell the most sophisticated [and complex] products to the most unsophisticated clients.

The only reason the stock market is doing so well is because of me. I've always been very good with money.

We never know what the Street is going to do with the funky trading.

Companies are transcending power now. We are becoming the eminent vehicles for change and influence, and capital structures that matter. If companies shut down, the stock market would collapse.

In Las Vegas, people know that the odds are stacked against them. On Wall Street, they manipulate the odds while you are playing the game.

The financial markets play an active role in determining what's going to happen, how the economy is going to function.

While enthusiasm may be necessary for great accomplishments elsewhere, on Wall Street it almost invariably leads to disaster

We believe the super stock option will become a reality before the end of 2000, ... It's a good idea whose time has come.

The stock market is but a mirror which provides an image of the underlying or fundamental economic situation. Cause and effect run from the economy to the stock market, never the reverse. In 1929 the economy was headed for trouble. Eventually that trouble was violently reflected in Wall Street.

It's important to recognize the vital role that the financial markets play in our economy and that so many of you are contributing to. To function effectively those markets and the men and women who shape them have to command trust and confidence, because we all rely on the market's transparency and integrity. So even if it may not be 100 percent true, if the perception is that somehow the game is rigged, that should be a problem for all of us, and we have to be willing to make that absolutely clear.