15 quotes
There's no way to know how good a player you are except by measuring against others.
The Poker Face of Wall Street (2006)
Monotheism introduced the idea that we should passively accept whatever fate God dealt. Gambling seemed to be a refusal to do that.
The Poker Face of Wall Street (2006)
There is a deep, ancient connection between gambling and divination.
The Poker Face of Wall Street (2006)
If no one gambled against the grain in good times, there would be no winners to inspire people in the bad times.
The Poker Face of Wall Street (2006)
All exchange stimulates productive activity, whether exchange by gift, gambling, barter, or money transaction.
The Poker Face of Wall Street (2006)
But you can't ignore dense people-they're not unarmed; they're armed differently.
The Poker Face of Wall Street (2006)
Many financial disasters can be traced to people who thought they were hedging.
The Poker Face of Wall Street (2006)
You need a strategy, and a trade or investment decision can be evaluated only in the context of that strategy.
The Poker Face of Wall Street (2006)
Mathematical theory, tested in practice and constantly retested, is a valuable aid to play. Mathematics alone will blind you and let others rob you.
The Poker Face of Wall Street (2006)
Fortunes made buying and selling securities have underwritten economic revolutions.
The Poker Face of Wall Street (2006)
Most people wander through life, carelessly taking whatever risk crosses their paths without compensation, but never consciously accepting extra risk to pick up the money and other good things lying all around them.
The Poker Face of Wall Street (2006)
The trading characteristics of a security become more important than its underlying economics. The virtual economics began to drive the physical economy rather than the other way around.
The Poker Face of Wall Street (2006)
If you want to understand financial markets, and their effects on the economy, you have to understand the trading game. Many short-term price movements are neither random nor caused by economic fundamentals. They're caused by investors buying and selling.
The Poker Face of Wall Street (2006)
Other people snap up the riskless profits pretty fast and bid the price of calculable risk opportunities to near their fair values. Things get a lot less crowded if you go for the incalculable risks, leaps of faith that cannot be inspected carefully before takeoff. So that is where you find extraordinary opportunities.
The Poker Face of Wall Street (2006)
From the lottery to raise the funds for the founding of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607 to the lottery used to pay the interest on Dutch loans to the United States during the Revolutionary War, the development of the United States was funded by gambling.
The Poker Face of Wall Street (2006)