George Soros
I'm not better than the next trader, just quicker at admitting my mistakes and moving on to the next opportunity.Collection: Mistake
Increase your bets when you are confident and scale down your positions when you don't have conviction.Collection: Conviction
I rely a great deal on animal instincts.Collection: Animal
Discount the obvious, bet on the unexpectedCollection: Unexpected
There is no point in being confident and having a small position.Collection: Be Confident
If investing is entertaining, if you're having fun, you're probably not making any money. Good investing is boring.Collection: Fun
To others, being wrong is a source of shame; to me, recognizing my mistakes is a source of pride.Collection: Mistake
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 valuesCollection: Analysis
The collapse of the global marketplace would be a traumatic event with unimaginable consequences. Yet I find it easier to imagine than the continuation of the present regime.Collection: Would Be
The prevailing wisdom is that markets are always right. I take the opposite position. I assume that markets are always wrong.Collection: Opposites
My approach works not by making valid predictions but by allowing me to correct false ones.Collection: Predictions
The global crisis is caused by pathologies inherent in the global financial system itself.Collection: Financial
These public-private partnerships are very, very dangerous. The most rotten part of the financial system in the US consisted of the government sponsored entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They really kicked off this crisis. The state should set the rules and enforce them - but not become involved as a market player.Collection: Player
Misconceptions play a prominent role in my view of the world.Collection: Views
A global economy is characterized not only by the free movement of goods and services but, more important, by the free movement of ideas and of capital.Collection: Ideas
We are the most powerful nation on earth. No external power, no terrorist organization can defeat us. But we can defeat ourselves by getting caught in a quagmire.Collection: Powerful
The laissez-faire argument relies on the same tacit appeal to perfection as does communism.Collection: Perfection
The integration of Europe was very much led by a Germany that was always willing to pay a little bit extra to reach a compromise that everybody accepted, because Germany was so eager to get European support for reunification. That was called the "farsighted vision," which created the European Union.Collection: Europe
The lower interest rates fueled housing and consumption booms in countries such as Spain and Ireland. At the same time, Germany, struggling with the burdens of reunification, tightened its belt and became more competitive. All this led to a wide divergence in economic performance. Europe became divided into creditor and debtor countries.Collection: Country
If we care about universal principles such as freedom, democracy and the rule of law, we cannot leave them to the care of market forces; we must establish some other institutions to safeguard them.Collection: Law
The concept of a general equilibrium has no relevance to the real world (in other words, classical economics is an exercise in futility).Collection: Real
At times of recession, running a budget deficit is highly desirable. Once the economy begins to recover, you have to balance the budget. But it will also need additional revenues. Should the government not receive them, we will all get punished with higher interest rates.Collection: Running
Markets can influence the events that they anticipate.Collection: Events
If the bubbles contain a misconception, as they always do, then it can't be maintained forever.Collection: Forever
Making an investment decision is like formulating a scientific hypothesis and submitting it to a practical test. The main difference is that the hypothesis that underlies an investment decision is intended to make money and not to establish a universally valid generalization.Collection: Differences
As I discovered, there is a great deal of similarity between a boom-bust process in the financial markets and the rise and fall of the Soviet system.Collection: Fall
I admire Chancellor Merkel for her leadership qualities, but she is leading Europe in the wrong direction.Collection: Europe
What works for Germany can't work for the rest of Europe: No country can run a chronic surplus without others running deficits.Collection: Running
I am against market fundamentalism. I think this propaganda that government involvement is always bad has been very successful - but also very harmful to our society.Collection: Successful
There is a well-established conviction that the central banks always do what is necessary to keep the system going and then afterwards you then take care of the legal aspects. In a crisis, you simply do not have time to think about such concerns for too long.Collection: Thinking
I called gold the ultimate bubble, which means it may go higher. But it’s certainly not safe and it’s not going to last forever.Collection: Mean
No individual anonymous participant can influence the prices and therefore you really can speculate in the market without paying attention to morality. That's one of the positive features of markets. That's why they function.Collection: Attention
My conceptual framework, which basically emphasizes the importance of misconceptions, makes me extremely critical of my own decisions. I know that I am bound to be wrong, and therefore am more likely to correct my own mistakes.Collection: Mistake
It is credit that matters, not money (in other words, monetarism is a false ideology).Collection: Investing
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.Collection: Country
The financial markets play an active role in determining what's going to happen, how the economy is going to function.Collection: Play
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.Collection: Risk
The scope for improvement is infinite, precisely because perfection is unattainable.Collection: Perfection
I don't panic. The same thing applies to me as to everybody else, so I'm given to euphoria and despair. And I would say that I basically have survived by recognizing my mistakes.Collection: Mistake
I very often used to get backaches due to the fact that I was wrong. Whenever you are wrong you have to fight or [take] flight. When [I] make the decision, the backache goes away.Collection: Fighting
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.Collection: Meaning Of Life
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.Collection: Successful
I would be lying, however, if I claimed that I could always formulate worthwhile hypotheses on the basis of my theoretical framework. Sometimes there were no reflexive processes to be found; sometimes I failed to find them; and, what was the most painful of all, sometimes I got them wrong. One way or another, I often invested without a worthwhile hypothesis and my activities were not very different from a random walk.Collection: Lying
Market prices are always wrong in the sense that they present a biased view of the future.Collection: Views
Changeless society is characterized by the absense of alternatives.Collection: Alternatives
Markets are imperfect. So you do need regulation, knowing that the regulators are also human.Collection: Knowing
Every bubble consists of a trend that can be observed in the real world and a misconception relating to that trend. The two elements interact with each other in a reflexive manner.Collection: Real
I am for maximum supervision and minimum regulation.Collection: Investing
Markets are designed to allow individuals to look after their private needs and to pursue profit. It's really a great invention, and I wouldn't underestimate the value of that. But they're not designed to take care of social needs.Collection: Great Inventions