I spend my day trying to make myself as happy and relaxed as I can be. If I have positions going against me, I get right out; if they are going for me, I keep them.

Where you want to be is always in control, never wishing, always trading, and always first and foremost protecting your ass. That's why most people lose money as individual investors or traders because they're not focusing on losing money. They need to focus on the money that they have at risk and how much capital is at risk in any single investment they have. If everyone spent 90 percent of their time on that, not 90 percent of the time on pie-in-the-sky ideas on how much money they're going to make, then they will be incredibly successful investors.

I'm always thinking about losing money as opposed to making money. Don't focus on making money, focus on protecting what you have

I spend my day trying to make myself as happy and relaxed as I can be. If I have positions going against me, I get right out; if they are going for me, I keep them.

We have ripped the humanity out of our companies. It's threatening the very underpinnings of our society.

My off-the-cuff remarks at the University of Virginia were with regard to global macro traders, who are on-call 24/7 and of whom there are likely only a few thousand successful practitioners in the world today. Macro trading requires a high degree of skill, focus and repetition. Life events, such as birth, divorce, death of a loved one and other emotional highs and lows are obstacles to success in this specific field of finance.

That cotton trade was almost the deal breaker for me. It was at that point that I said, “Mr. Stupid, why risk everything on one trade? Why not make your life a pursuit of happiness rather than pain?