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The institutional investor remains the bigger influence on individual trades simply because the institutional investor has more money to support the order and that will have more of an impact on the stock.

On the New York Stock Exchange, all buy and sell orders are routed through a single 'specialist,' guaranteeing that most small trades can be matched directly. But most larger trades are delivered to the specialist on the floor of the exchange by human brokers, a system that big investors view as increasingly inefficient.

Financial institutions like to call what they do trading. Let's be honest. It's not trading; it's betting.

Individual investors have become far more powerful than anyone gives them credit for. Today, 85 million Americans invest in stocks. Collectively, that kind of buying and selling power can move markets.

Big money is made in the stock market by being on the right side of the major moves. The idea is to get in harmony with the market. It's suicidal to fight trends. They have a higher probability of continuing than not.

High-frequency traders are firms all around the world. They're massive investments.

The average investor does significantly worse than a simple index... It's literally because of the way our brains are wired.

I come from good stock. Both of my parents are big - my dad is a big guy; my mom is a big lady.

The stock market is like a small row boat on a rough sea, bouncing around as it drifts, whereas the macro economy is like a large ocean liner, very ponderous and difficult to maneuver but without such a rough journey.

I thought at the time that I wanted to go into institutional sales, selling stocks and bonds to institutions. In those days, which was the 1960s, the institutional salesman was making about $100,000 a year. I thought that was just an enormous amount of money.