Michael Steinhardt
Michael Steinhardt
Michael H. Steinhardtis an American hedge fund manager, financier, investor, newspaper publisher, and philanthropist active in Jewish causes. He was one of the first prominent hedge fund managers, and is a graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He founded Steinhardt, Fine, Berkowitz & Co., a hedge fund, in 1967. Author Sebastian Mallaby referred to Steinhardt as "a legend in the story of hedge funds, partly because of his success as a trader, but also because of...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
Date of Birth7 December 1940
CountryUnited States of America
Time and again, in every market cycle I have witnessed, the extremes of emotion always appear, even among experienced investors. When the world wants to buy only [bonds], you can almost close your eyes and [buy] stocks.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the heroes were the long-term investors; today the heroes are the wise guys.
A good trader has to have three things: a chronic inability to accept things at face value, to feel continuously unsettled, and to have humility.
The markets are always changing, and the successful trader needs to adapt to these changes.
The balance between confidence and humility is best learned through extensive experience and mistakes.
The hardest thing over the years has been having the courage to go against the dominant wisdom of the time to have a view that is at variance with the present consensus and bet that view. The hard part is that the investor must measure himself not by his own perceptions of his performance, but by the objective measure of the market. The market has its own reality. In an immediate emotional sense the market is always right so if you take a variant point of view you will always be bombarded for some time by conventional wisdom as expressed by the market.
Good investing is a peculiar balance between the conviction to follow your ideas and the flexibility to recognize when you have made a mistake.
I was happier when pursuing success than I was when savoring its fruits; the attraction, perhaps the addiction, was in the process, as much as in its end.