Most people would agree that walking on the moon was one of mankind’s greatest achievements.
And I agree.
It’s incredible people have left our planet and traveled almost 250,000 miles in a metal box to land on the moon. And then they came back!
Plus, they did it in 1969 without access to the amazing technology we have available today.
It was an amazing accomplishment, but the path to the moon was rocky.
From the fire on Apollo 1…
to Neil Armstrong escaping a training disaster a year before his moonwalk…
there were many failures.
But each failure was an opportunity to learn, improve, and gain more experience. It was a critical part of the process.
Sticking with the space theme, we see a similar approach used by Elon Musk and SpaceX.
In 2023, a new SpaceX rocket called Starship exploded a few minutes into its first-ever flight.
The media branded it a failure.
Some even made fun of Elon.
But, SpaceX branded the test launch a success – even though it ended with a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” (what SpaceX calls a rocket explosion).
Here’s the thing:
Mankind’s greatest achievements are very often built on a foundation of failures.
And small achievements are too.
We’re not trying to build rockets or land on the moon here, but the “successful failure” principle is a great approach for trading.
Assemble a trading strategy that doesn’t work? Great. Analyze what could have gone wrong and try again.
Launch a portfolio in live trading that isn’t performing as expected? Awesome. Learn from the experience. Reload. Go again.
Failure isn’t a bad thing. It’s an exercise in problem-solving.
Failure isn’t a loss, it’s a lesson.
All successful traders have failures along the way. It’s part of the process. But they all learn from the failure, reset, and try again. Every attempt pushes them forward.
That’s the key to trading…
Adopt Elon Musk’s “successful failure” formula and keep going.
Every attempt pushes YOU forward too!
Tomas
