“I’m only rich because I know when I’m wrong.”

If I had to sum up my practical skills, I would use one word: survival. And operating a hedge fund utilized my training in survival to the fullest.

Fundamental analysis seeks to establish how underlying values are reflected in stock prices, whereas the theory of reflexivity shows how stock prices can influence underlying values.

Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux and money is made by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected.

Investors operate with limited funds and intelligence, they do not need to know everything. As long as they understand something better than others, they have an edge.

The global crisis is caused by pathologies inherent in the global financial system itself.

The worse a situation becomes the less it takes to turn it around, the bigger the upside.

Markets can influence the events that they anticipate.

I fancied myself as some kind of god or an economic reformer like Keynes.

There is no point in being confident and having a small position.

America needs to follow the policies it has introduced in Germany. We have to go through a certain de-Nazification process.

If we carry this line of argument to its logical conclusion, the meaning of life consists of the flaws in one’s conceptions and what one does about them. Life can be seen as a fertile fallacy.

Every bubble has two components: something – some real trend, and a misconception about that trend.

Start by assuming the market is always wrong, so if you copy everybody else on Wall Street, you’re doomed to do poorly.

The trouble with institutional investors is that their performance is usually measured relative to their peer group and not by an absolute yardstick. This makes them trend followers by definition.

Political debate is more interested in manipulating the truth, than finding the truth.

Short term volatility is greatest at turning points and diminishes as a trend becomes established.

Young children were always so important to me. Adults should treat children with more respect. We should put more monies in our schools. I grew up on that side of the coin.

Med students panic their first year when they learn all the diseases. It’s not until the second year that they learn the cures.

For I now realize that what overcame me that evening was a sudden awareness of the power of intuition, the supra-logic that cuts out all routine processes of thought and leaps straight from problem to answer.

My reading list grows exponentially. Every time I read a book, it’ll mention three other books I feel I have to read. It’s like a particularly relentless series of pop-up ads.

For I now realize that what overcame me that evening was a sudden awareness of the power of intuition, the supra-logic that cuts out all routine processes of thought and leaps straight from problem to answer.

The awareness of our own strength makes us modest.

Example is the softest and least invidious way of commanding.

Prose books are the show dogs I breed and sell to support my cat.