Financial Markets Quotes

• The financial markets generally are unpredictable. So that one has to have different scenarios... The idea that you can actually predict what's going to happen contradicts my way of looking at the market.

  George Soros

  Ideas, Way, Different

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• The reality is that financial markets are self-destabilizing; occasionally they tend toward disequilibrium, not equilibrium.

  George Soros

  Reality, Self, Financial

  "My Interview with George Soros: End of Financial Crisis Could Be in Sight". Interview with Nathan Gardels, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 12, 2008.

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• As financial markets continue to broaden and deepen, the behavior of asset prices will play an important role in the formulation of monetary policy going forward, perhaps a more important role than in the past.

  Timothy Geithner

  Past, Play, Important

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• Taking this view, it is possible to see financial markets as a laboratory for testing hypotheses, albeit not strictly scientific ones. The truth is, successful investing is a kind of alchemy.

  George Soros

  Successful, Views, Investing

  George Soros (1994). “The Alchemy of Finance: Reading the Mind of the Market”, p.14, John Wiley & Sons

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• An open, competitive, and liberalized financial market can effectively allocate scarce resources in a manner that promotes stability and prosperity far better than governmental intervention.

  Henry Paulson

  Financial, Prosperity, Resources

  "Bankers & Brokers Have Learned Nothing From the Current Crisis" by Joseph L. Shaefer, seekingalpha.com. May 13, 2009.

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• Trillions of dollars every day are being exchanged around the world in all of the financial markets.

  Kenneth Lay

  Dollars, World, Financial

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• The full consequences of a default or even the serious prospect of default by the United States are impossible to predict and awesome to contemplate. Denigration of the full faith and credit of the United States would have substantial effects on the domestic financial markets and on the value of the dollar in exchange markets. The Nation can ill afford to allow such a result. The risks, the cost, the disruptions, and the incalculable damage lead me to but one conclusion: the Senate must pass this legislation before the Congress adjourns.

  Ronald Reagan

  Risk, Damage, Serious

  Letter to Majority Leader Howard Baker, November 16, 1983.

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• To achieve long-term success over many financial market and economic cycles, observing a few rules is not enough. Too many things change too quickly in the investment world for that approach to succeed. It is necessary instead to understand the rationale behind the rules in order to appreciate why they work when they do and don't when they don't.

  Seth Klarman

  Order, Long, Appreciate

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• I contend that financial markets never reflect the underlying reality accurately; they always distort it in some way or another and the distortions find expression in market prices. Those distortions can, occasionally, find ways to affect the fundamentals that market prices are supposed to reflect.

  George Soros

  Reality, Expression, Investing

  George Soros (2009). “The Crash of 2008 and What it Means: The New Paradigm for Financial Markets”, p.7, Hachette UK

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• Through all aspects of society be it art, design, the financial markets, government, technology or communications we are witnessing unprecedented global transformation - the result of which is impossible to predict.

  Malcolm Mclaren

  Art, Communication, Technology

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• America is the greatest engine of innovation that has ever existed, and it can't be duplicated anytime soon, because it is the product of a multitude of factors: extreme freedom of thought, an emphasis on independent thinking, a steady immigration of new minds, a risk-taking culture with no stigma attached to trying and failing, a noncorrupt bureaucracy, and financial markets and a venture capital system that are unrivaled at taking new ideas and turning them into global products.

  Thomas Friedman

  Independent, Thinking, Ideas

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• Capital movements are no longer necessarily related to the production of goods and services. Through the financial markets of the world, capital movements today are overwhelmingly concerned with the capture of and trade in property rights, the ownership of assets that magnify a corporation's wealth, power, and control. It is what John Maynard Keynes described as "a casino world"-wealth without worth.

  Eric Kierans

  Rights, Movement, World

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• The Federal Reserve has a responsibility to ensure the safety and soundness of financial institutions and to contain systemic risks in financial markets.

  Bernie Sanders

  Responsibility, Safety, Risk

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Financial markets need to become less, not more, efficient.

  Ha-Joon Chang

  Needs, Financial, Efficient

  "23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism". Book by Ha-Joon Chang, 2010.

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• In the financial markets I find it easy to predict what will happen and very difficult to predict when it will happen. I think that things were clear during the bubble as to what would happen eventually.

  Warren Buffett

  Thinking, Financial, Easy

  "Warren Buffett: 'My elephant gun is loaded'". Interview with Dominic Lawson, Robert Peston and Grant, www.telegraph.co.uk. September 22, 2002.

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• I think what is happening is I think first of all there is confidence in the U.K. economy. We're in a German rather than a Greek position in international financial markets, which is very positive and keeps our debt service costs down, and we're also beginning to see real evidence of rebalancing.

  Vince Cable

  Real, Thinking, Greek

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• Financial markets are supposed to swing like a pendulum: They may fluctuate wildly in response to exogenous shocks, but eventually they are supposed to come to rest at an equilibrium point and that point is supposed to be the same irrespective of the interim fluctuations. Instead, as I told Congress, financial markets behaved more like a wrecking ball, swinging from country to country and knocking over the weaker ones. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the international financial system itself constituted the main ingredient in the meltdown process.

  George Soros

  Country, Swings, Balls

  "The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered". Book by George Soros, 1998.

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• It is time to put in place tough, new common-sense rules of the road so that our financial market rewards drive and innovation, and punishes short-cuts and abuse.

  Barack Obama

  Cutting, Common Sense, Innovation

  First Speech to a Joint Session of Congress, delivered 24 February 2009

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• Selling drug secrets violates a trust that is fundamental to the integrity of both scientific research and our financial markets.

  Chuck Grassley

  Integrity, Drug, Secret

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• In the past six months, our federal government has devised a dozen strategies to save America's financial markets. Each plan has been more costly, more risky, and less aligned with the principles of our country's free market economy than the last. I am disappointed to say that this latest plan puts all the rest of them to shame.

  Michael Enzi

  Country, Business, Past

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• Financial markets ... resent any kind of government interference but they hold a belief deep down that if conditions get really rough the authorities will step in.

  George Soros

  Business, Government, Steps

  George Soros (2000). “Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism”, PublicAffairs

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• The key to trading success is emotional discipline. If intelligence were the key, there would be a lot more people making money trading… I know this will sound like a cliché, but the single most important reason that people lose money in the financial markets is that they don't cut their losses short.

  Victor Sperandeo

  Cutting, Loss, Emotional

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• In an economy that already has lost some momentum, one must remain alert to the possibility that greater caution and weakening asset values in financial markets could signal or precipitate an excessive softening in household and business spending.

  Alan Greenspan

  Momentum, Financial, Economy

  "Fed chief sparks US rally" by Jane Martinson, www.theguardian.com. December 5, 2000.

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• Business chief executive officers and their boards succumb to the pressures of the financial markets and their fears of takeovers and pour out their energies to produce quarterly earnings - at the expense of building their companies for the long term.

  J. Irwin Miller

  Long, Earning, Pressure

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• God understands more about the financial markets than many who write about them.

  Jean-Claude Juncker

  Writing, Financial

  "'Athens Is Not Broke'". Interview with Michael Sauga and Christoph Schult, www.spiegel.de. May 23, 2011.

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