“A trader's mental construction should direct him to do precisely what other people do not do.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“Veteran trader Marty O'Connell calls this the firehouse effect. ...[F]iremen ...who talk to each other for too long come to agree on many things that an outside, impartial observer would find ludicrous...” Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“[A]t any point in time, the richest traders are often the worst traders. This I will call the cross-sectional problem: At a given time... the most successful traders are likely to be those fit for the latest cycle.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“[T]hey share the traits of the acute successful randomness fool who, in addition, operates in the most random of environments. ...[T]heir bosses and employers shared the same trait. They, too, are permanently out of the market.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“There is a saying that bad traders divorce their spouse sooner than abandon their positions. Loyalty to ideas is not a good thing for traders, scientists - or anyone.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“Why do [people] confuse probability and expectation, that is, probability [vs.] probability times payoff? Mainly because much... schooling comes from examples in symmetric environments... the... bell curve... is entirely symmetric.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“I have organized my career and business in such a way as to... benefit... I am profiting from the rare event, with asymmetric bets.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“Sometimes market data becomes a simple trap; it shows you the opposite of its nature... [e.g.,] Currencies that exhibit the largest historical stability... are the most prone to crashes.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“I reject a sole time series of the past as an indication of future performance; I need a lot more than data.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“[W]e read too much into shallow recent history... but not from history in general [which] teaches us that things that never happened before do happen. ...outside of the narrowly defined time series; the broader the look, the better the lesson.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“There's literally no difference between a physician recognizing a disease from a "facial expression", and a little child pointing to something and saying "doggie".” Daniel Kahneman
“A recurrent theme of this book is that luck plays a large role in every story of success; it is almost always easy to identify a small change in the story that would have turned a remarkable achievement into a mediocre outcome.” Daniel Kahneman
“Intelligence is not only the ability to reason; it is also the ability to find relevant material in memory and to deploy attention when needed.” Daniel Kahneman
“A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth.” Daniel Kahneman
“It is the of the information that matters for a good story, not its completeness. Indeed, you will often find that knowing little makes it easier to fit everything you know into a coherent pattern.” Daniel Kahneman
“There is a deep gap between our thinking about statistics and our thinking about individual cases.” Daniel Kahneman
“Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.” Daniel Kahneman
“He's taking an inside view. He should forget about his own case and look for what happened in other cases.” Daniel Kahneman
“There is no evidence that risk takers in the economic domain have an unusual appetite for gambles on high stakes; they are merely less aware of risks than more timid people are.” Daniel Kahneman
“A rare event will be overweighted if it specifically attracts attention. [...] And when there is no overweighting, there will be neglect.” Daniel Kahneman
“Unless there is an obvious reason to do otherwise, 'most of us passively accept decision problems as they are framed and therefore rarely have an opportunity to discover the extent to which our preferences are frame-bound rather than reality-bound.” Daniel Kahneman
“Experienced well-being is on average unaffected by marriage, not because marriage makes no difference to happiness, but because it changes some aspects of life for the better and others for the worse.” Daniel Kahneman
“Although humans are not irrational, they often need help to make more accurate judgements and better decisions. [...] [They] also need protection from others who deliberately exploit their weaknesses [...].” Daniel Kahneman
“Low cost relative to competitors becomes the theme running through the entire strategy, though quality, service and other areas cannot be ignored.” Michael Porter
“The firm achieving focus may also potentially earn above-average returns for its industry. Its focus means that the firm either has a low cost position with its strategic target, high differentiation, or both.” Michael Porter
“The grandfather of concepts for predicting the probable course of industry evolution is the familiar .” Michael Porter
“Quasi-integration is to use debt or equity investments and other means to create alliances between vertically related firms without full ownership.” Michael Porter
“The success of a strategy depends on doing many things well – not just a few – and integrating among them.” Michael Porter
“To be popular is easy; to be right when right is unpopular, is noble... I repudiate with scorn the immoral doctrine, 'Our country, right or wrong'.” Andrew Carnegie
“The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship.” Andrew Carnegie
“Upon the sacredness of property civilization itself depends—the right of the laborer to his hundred dollars in the savings bank, and equally the legal right of the millionaire to his millions.” Andrew Carnegie
“Those who would administer wisely must, indeed, be wise, for one of the serious obstacles to the improvement of our race is indiscriminate charity.” Andrew Carnegie
“Such, in my opinion, is the true Gospel concerning Wealth, obedience to which is destined some day to solve the problem of the Rich and the Poor, and to bring "Peace on earth, among men Good Will.” Andrew Carnegie
“[S]urplus wealth should be considered as a sacred trust, to be administered during the lives of its owners, by them as trustees, for the good of the community in which and from which it had been acquired.” Andrew Carnegie
“It is not the rich man's son that the young struggler for advancement has to fear in the race of life, nor his nephew, nor his cousin. Let him look out for the "dark horse" in the boy who begins by sweeping out the office.” Andrew Carnegie
“The sound rule in business is that you may give money freely when you have a surplus, but your name never—neither as endorser nor as member of a corporation with individual liability” Andrew Carnegie
“No, Your Majesty, I do not like kings, but I do like a man behind a king when I find him.” Andrew Carnegie