caseyresearch.com / By Louis James / March 11, 2013
Have you ever heard of a national or international champion baseball, football, or basketball team that won every single game it played in a season? How often does even the best tennis player win every set in a match, or every match on his or her way to a championship? Or even within a single game, how often does one side win every possession or score every point?
To the sports fans among us – please don’t send me answers to these questions: they are rhetorical. The point is to recognize and accept that setbacks are normal, even on the way to the greatest victories.
Further, lower-ranked teams can and do beat top-ranked competitors. Similarly, outnumbered military forces can win battles, and dark-horse candidates can win elections.
The main attribute of a winner is not necessarily superiority but perseverance.
It helps to be right, of course, to be the best – but many people are completely in the right, or are very strong, and still fail. Failure, alas, is all too common. Courage in the face of adversity is not – and that’s why real champions are so rare, and so rightly admired.
Shifting gears to the world of finance, let me ask: what prices move in straight lines? Only prices set by policy. In a market, prices fluctuate – as well they should – in response to changes in costs, demand, and myriad other factors. This isn’t just normal, it’s necessary (and government attempts to prevent it always lead to disaster, sooner or later).
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