In February, I crossed a major life goal off my bucket list…
I sailed 2,000 nautical miles across the Atlantic Ocean from Europe to the Caribbean in my red-hulled catamaran.
It was the greatest journey of my life… And also the most harrowing.
After a successful start to our voyage, we ran into some major problems.
First, my boat’s autopilot failed. Then, the rudders broke. Finally, we nearly ran out of fuel.
We were adrift in the middle of the ocean, nearly 1,200 miles from shore.
Fortunately, we saw another boat on our radar system. It was a 285-foot mega yacht.
My captain radioed for help – and God bless him – the captain of the other boat replied. His crew supplied us with fuel and tools to fix my boat’s rudder.
(If you are a Palm Beach Confidential subscriber, you can get the full story of my transatlantic voyage right here.)
Friends, when you’re adrift on the high seas while 15-foot swells toss you around like a rag doll… you gain a newfound appreciation for the little things in life.
I used to take them for granted… but not anymore.
The experience also gave me some profound insight on investing – especially when it comes to patience.
And that’s what I want to talk to you about today…
Being Impatient Cost Me Millions
During my transatlantic voyage, I had a lot of time to think about life… especially some of the mistakes I’ve made in the past.
You see, I’ve always been good at identifying massive trends. But when I was a young professional, I’d get impatient and exit positions before the trend took off.
That happened to me in 1994…
I watched as the Fed vaporized my tech investments when it raised interest rates five times from a low of 3% to a high of 6%.
I was young and inexperienced broker on Wall Street. So I did what young and inexperienced investors do: I panicked and sold amazing emerging tech names like Microsoft and Oracle at the lows.
That decision haunted me for 25 years. Had I just held on, I would have made well over $20 million before I turned 30.
That failure crushed my mind for years. I then made another mistake that cost me over $720 million.
In 2003, I went long on Apple, betting on the widespread adoption of the iPod.
After I bought Apple, Steve Jobs came out and canceled 55 million stock options, sparking fears the company’s founder was dumping shares.
Apple shares tanked. But this time, I held on and rode out the storm. The mistake I made this time was selling far, far too early after they rebounded.
On a split-adjusted basis, Apple was trading at just 25 cents per share in 2003. At its recent peak, I would have made over $750 million for every $1 million I had invested in the stock.
This financial mistake has caused me more heartache, regret, and self-flagellation than any other financial decision I have ever made.
That includes the bad decisions I made in 1998 that ultimately compelled me to file for personal bankruptcy.
The bankruptcy was less traumatic than leaving $750 million on the table.
Reflecting on the past provided me with the perspective I needed to be patient for the future.
Let me explain…
Before I embarked on my journey, bitcoin had just begun to emerge from the most recent Crypto Winter.
At the beginning of 2023, BTC was trading at around $16,600. By the time I set sail from the Canary Islands in late January, it was at around $23,000.
But while I was on the open ocean, I didn’t know what the price was doing. I had no internet access… no television… no newspapers.
I was virtually cut off from the rest of the world.
The lack of access to outside communications forced me to focus on the long-term trajectory of the crypto asset class – not its short-term price action.
And focusing on the long-term requires patience.
Patience Will Pay Off
I’ve experienced four separate decades of market cycles. I’ve lived through the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and now the 2010s.
I wager I’ve seen more market cycles than 98% of the people in the crypto space.
And what I’ve learned is that if you invest in any new technological trend, you need a clear roadmap to an outcome.
You have to ask yourself, “How beneficial is the technology? And how many people will use it?” The path it takes to get there doesn’t matter.
I saw this firsthand with the cellphone.
When I worked on Wall Street in 1991, I told my clients to invest in McCaw Cellular.
At the time, cell phones were for the wealthy. They were wildly expensive and incredibly impractical.
And here I was, telling clients that everyone would eventually own a cell phone. I said they’d be ubiquitous as televisions and incredibly cheap.
I got laughed off the phone.
That’s because it was difficult for my clients to imagine a world radically different from the one they lived in (just like now with crypto asset adoption).
But I knew cellphones would eventually see massive adoption. We just had to be patient because it wouldn’t get there in a straight line.
Just three years later in 1994, McCaw merged with AT&T in a deal valued at $11.5 billion. At the time, it was the biggest telecommunications deal in history.
Here’s the thing… A decade earlier, cellphones were a novelty.
Motorola released the first commercial cellphone in 1983. It provided 30 minutes of talk time… could only store 30 phone numbers… and cost $3,995.
Today, there are nearly 6.92 billion cellphones across the world. And you can buy a Motorola cellphone for as cheap as $29 at Walmart.
Friends, when you invest in a transformational technology in its early days, nobody believes it will go mainstream. They’ll call you crazy or insane.
But just like the internet and cellphones… I believe we’ll see crypto adoption go from tens of millions of people to billions of people.
And the time to position yourself is now. That’s because I’m following a trend involving another type of digital currency.
You see, we could be days away from a mandatory recall on the U.S. dollar, in which the government would replace it with a new digital version that will be radically different from what you have in your bank account right now.
The government could announce this new regime any day now. I released a video explaining how this new digital dollar could play out.
During the briefing, I’ll show you the one move you must make when your bank tells you they’re moving all your cash into this new digital dollar.
You can watch it for free right here.
Let the Game Come to You!
Big T