In the recent Gamestop episode, there was a group of wallstreet firms who shorted the stock on one side, and the redditors who bet against that bet on the other. There was a third side. Being in that side is a skill worth cultivating.
The third side did not care about who was right or wrong. They just clinically looked at it as a momentum opportunity and made money on the stock price gains ( and probably on the way down as well!) As business and hype cycles get shorter over the next decade, many such opportunities present themselves. How do you see it ahead of the time or at the start, mobilize resources and take advantage of the opportunity before window closes? It is quite possible that the next opportunity might be diametrically opposite or unrelated to this one.
The ability to acquire or find skills for these short treasure hunts is a skill by itself. That can be broken down into (at least) the following:
- Hustle: Ability to identify/acquire/mobilize resources
- Accepting Risk: Awareness and comfort with the fact that quite a few of these may not work out ( as a smart man said : ‘ It is not an experiment if you already know the results in advance!’)
- Against the Herd: Every social media/peer group/community wants you to ‘conform’. Going against is not easy or popular.
- Learn and DO NOT repeat: The one thing in your control is to absorb learnings every time and ensuring you make only NEW mistakes, not OLD ones!
- Be ( incredibly ) Fast! : Criticality of this cannot be overstated.
Now how many of the above qualities come naturally to us, taught to us? How to acquire these skills/behaviors ? Can they be ‘learnt’ at all? What current windows am I not seeing?
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