George Soros Quotes

One capability every business is expected to have is the capability to make money. It requires a certain kind of discipline, a certain kind of mindset.

It's important to understand economic trends, but, in my mind, it's more important to understand how to buck the trends.

Hedge funds are a very efficient way of managing money. But there are clearly some risks. Hedge funds use credit and credit is a source of instability. Transactions involving credit should be regulated.

With respect to their safety, derivatives, for the most part, are traded among very sophisticated financial institutions and individuals who have considerable incentive to understand them and to use them properly.

Learn to take losses quickly and cleanly. There is something about inside information which seems to paralyze a man's reasoning powers. Beware of barbers, beauticians, waiters - or anyone - bringing gifts of 'inside' information or tips. Don't try to be a jack of all investment. Stick to the field you know best.

It's in the nature of stock markets to go way down from time to time. There's no system to avoid bad markets. You can't do it unless you try to time the market, which is a seriously dumb thing to do. Conservative investing with steady savings without expecting miracles is the way to go.

Far more money has been lost by investors preparing for corrections, or trying to anticipate corrections, than has been lost in corrections themselves.

One of the most helpful things that anybody can learn is to give up trying to catch the last eighth - or the first. These two are the most expensive eighths in the world. They have cost stock traders, in the aggregate, enough millions of dollars to build a concrete highway across the continent.

There is very little difference between speculation and investment. The only difference is basically that investments are successful speculations because if you successfully anticipate the future you make a speculative profit.

The purpose of this book is to supply, in the form suitable for laymen, guidance in the adoption and execution of an investment policy.

The essence of effective portfolio construction is the use of a large number of poorly correlated assets.

John Maynard Keynes essentially said, don't try and figure out what the market is doing. Figure out a business you understand, and concentrate.

The principle of investing is that by use you possess and gain, by disuse you decline and lose.

No one in his right mind would walk into the cockpit of an airplane and try to fly it, or into an operating theater and open a belly. And yet they think nothing of managing their retirement assets. I've done all three, and I'm here to tell you that managing money is, in its most critical elements even more demanding than the first two.

One of the most helpful things that any body can learn is to give up trying to catch the last eighth - or the first. These two are the most expensive eighths in the world.

The investor's primary interest lies in acquiring and holding suitable securities at suitable prices.

"You need hedges.""Hedges," I said, bemused. "Yes, Edgar." He looked surprised and a little disappointed, as if I had failed to understand a very simple concept. "Hedges against the night."

I am a better investor because I am a businessman, and a better businessman because I am no investor.

Don't try to be a jack of all investments. Stick to the field you know best.

No matter how skillful the trading scheme, over the long haul, abnormal returns are sustained only through abnormal exposure to risk.

I don't think that hedge funds are bad per se. I think they're just one more financial tool. And in that sense, they're useful.

Our policy is to concentrate holdings. We try to avoid buying a little of this or that when we are only lukewarm about the business or its price. When we are convinced as to attractiveness, we believe in buying worthwhile amounts.

Do not take yearly results too seriously. Instead, focus on four or five-year averages.

Berkshire's past record has been almost ridiculous. If Berkshirehad used even half the leverage of, say, Rupert Murdoch, it would be five times its current size.

He really meant to tell them that the big money was not in the individual fluctuations but in the main movements that is, not in reading the tape but in sizing up the entire market and its trend.