| Squeeze them into your gin and tonic and make the best of it.
I suppose that works better with limes rather than lemons…
But I’m sure that, sitting in the Miami Airport Admirals Club at 8 a.m., I don’t really care.
I took the night flight from Lima, Peru, expecting to have a quick layover in Miami en route to Dallas. Instead, I got stuck in the colossal airport jam-up caused by the FAA’s computer failure.
Every flight in America was grounded for about three hours … including mine.
It may be the gin talking. Or it may be my lack of sleep. But this incident has put me on a philosophical bent, and there are a few lessons we can learn from this incident I’d like to share…
To start, ALWAYS have a back-up plan … and be able to make changes on the fly.
The FAA clearly didn’t have a back-up plan … which is just embarrassing. It’s a disgrace that a computer blip can take down the transportation system of the biggest and most powerful economy on the planet.
But for me, it really wasn’t much more than a mild inconvenience. I was able to flip open my laptop and get some writing and research done.
But it gets you thinking … what other parts of our critical infrastructure… or our economy… or our entire way of life are one computer glitch away from turning upside-down?
Just like a computer glitch in a complex system, your trading won’t always go the way you planned. A position might go the wrong way on you. And when that happens, you need to know ahead of time how you plan to get out of it, whether than means following a stop-loss or some other risk management technique.
More broadly, remember that the more complex a system is, the more that can go wrong. If I have connecting flights, I always give myself far more time between flights than is generally recommended because I know that missing a flight can set off a domino effect that leaves me stranded — potentially for days.
The same holds true of trading strategies. Simpler strategies are easier to implement, easier to monitor and easier to exit when things go the wrong way on you. The more complicated your strategy, the more likely that something goes wrong.
That’s what makes Charles Mizrahi’s work so refreshing.
Charles keeps it simple. He’s been doing the same thing his entire career: looking for quality stocks led by nimble CEOs with skin in the game. He buys ‘em small and watches ‘em grow big.
Sit tight, enjoy the ride and look forward to a big pat on the back from your future self. For more on how well that works, scroll on back up and hear it from the man himself.
But before you run, and before I finally get to board my flight back home to Dallas, I want to share one more tidbit.
The fragility of our word today means you have to be nimble as an investor or a trader. Yes, you can buy great stocks, but you must also keep an eye on them for any sign of things going wrong.
Other traders, like Mike Carr, prefer to be so nimble that they’re in and out of trades in a matter of days, even hours, as conditions rapidly change.
Mike believes right now’s the best time to be a trader in years, and he’s proving it with his Shakeout Trades strategy.
With it, Mike is targeting the most volatile tech stocks in the market for a specific, rare, but highly profitable pattern.
Click here and put your name down for Mike’s presentation tomorrow, January 12, to learn all about it.
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