Over the last few weeks, I’ve been listening to an audiobook of David McCullough’s 1776.
It’s funny, when I started it, I wasn’t really thinking about the upcoming holiday.
Honestly, I’m just a big nerd who is pretty much always listening to SOME history audiobook, and this just happened to be the latest pick. 🤓
But as we’ve gotten closer to the holiday, it has been interesting to hear the story of the first year play out, and listen as the book, which mostly focuses on the progress and failures of the Continental Army, reveals secrets about the Founding Fathers that you might otherwise never have known.
The big takeaway for me?
A lot of these guys didn’t know what they were doing.
And I don’t mean that as an insult. In fact, they said it themselves!
When George Washington was given command of the Continental Army, he said, “I am truly sensible of the high Honor done me in this Appointment… I do not think myself equal to the Command I am honored with.”
And there’s a good argument that he wasn’t…
Facing down the drilled, polished, and overwhelming forces of the greatest military and navy on earth at the time, Washington’s limited experience and ragtag group of minutemen were completely outclassed and strategically outmaneuvered in the early going.
And yet, we don’t remember any of that…
We remember him as a great general, the “Father of the Nation,” and the first President.
Why?
Because he stuck with it. He persevered through the challenges and built his reputation, his story of success, one victory at a time.
And it may be that success at Yorktown doesn’t come without the abysmal failure at Long Island five years earlier.
It’s possible that the President we remember as holding together a fractious cabinet of luminaries might never have succeeded had he not had years of experience managing the egos of self-centered and under-qualified generals in the early days of the Revolution.
In other words, he needed to fight through the challenges to achieve success.
Now, nothing you do in ThinkorSwim, TastyTrade, Robinhood, or any other brokerage platform has quite the stakes that the Revolutionary War did, so breathe easy.
But if you DO find yourself struggling…
Especially if you’re a newer trader, and you “do not think yourself equal to the [strategies/stocks/options] you are honored with…”
Then you’re just where George Washington was in 1776.
And if he can overcome the Royal Navy and the British military with a group of farmers and tradesmen from the disorganized colonies…
Then you can probably figure out what you’re doing in your account, too!
Happy Fourth of July to those who celebrate. I should have a brief update tomorrow before the long holiday weekend, but I hope you’ll be enjoying yourself over the coming days.
To your prosperity,
Stephen Ground
Editor-in-Chief, ProsperityPub
