"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"
About this Quote
Markets are a machine built to seduce people into thinking theyre a machine. Soros punctures that comfort with a plainspoken heresy: unpredictability isnt a temporary glitch in the system, its the system. The line reads like a rebuke to the television-economist genre of certainty, but it also doubles as a self-portrait of how Soros wants his craft understood: not prophecy, but positioning.
The key move is his shift from prediction to scenarios. Thats not just prudent risk management language; its an epistemology. He is telling you that the market is a social arena where narratives, fear, policy shocks, and crowd behavior collide, then get retrofitted with after-the-fact explanations that make randomness feel like reason. In that world, conviction is dangerous unless it comes with exits. A scenario mindset is both humility and aggression: humility about what can be known, aggression in preparing to act faster than people whove fallen in love with a single forecast.
Context matters because Soros is famous precisely for trades that look like clairvoyance (breaking the Bank of England), and this quote pushes back against the myth. He frames his edge as adaptability, not omniscience. The subtext is almost moral: if you sell certainty, youre either selling a product or selling yourself. His worldview treats confidence as a liability and flexibility as the only durable advantage in a market that punishes anyone who confuses a story with a law of nature.
The key move is his shift from prediction to scenarios. Thats not just prudent risk management language; its an epistemology. He is telling you that the market is a social arena where narratives, fear, policy shocks, and crowd behavior collide, then get retrofitted with after-the-fact explanations that make randomness feel like reason. In that world, conviction is dangerous unless it comes with exits. A scenario mindset is both humility and aggression: humility about what can be known, aggression in preparing to act faster than people whove fallen in love with a single forecast.
Context matters because Soros is famous precisely for trades that look like clairvoyance (breaking the Bank of England), and this quote pushes back against the myth. He frames his edge as adaptability, not omniscience. The subtext is almost moral: if you sell certainty, youre either selling a product or selling yourself. His worldview treats confidence as a liability and flexibility as the only durable advantage in a market that punishes anyone who confuses a story with a law of nature.
Quote Details
| Topic | Investment |
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