Asymmetric Bets Will Boost Your Win Rate

Van’s Note: Van Bryan here, Jeff Brown’s managing editor. Our beat here is high technology. But when we find profitable ideas from our colleagues, we pass them along.

Tom’s made a radical investment… one that he’s put his family’s whole net worth into. But he believes that this is a chance to make generational wealth. And he’s put together an urgent presentation for investors who are interested. It airs tonight at 8 p.m. ET. If you haven’t signed up already, make sure to go here and put your name down.

And today, we bring readers an essay where Tom divulges the benefits of asymmetric bets… ones that can score investors massive, outsized gains. Read on to find out more.

By Tom Dyson, Editor, Postcards From the Fringe

Have you ever played slot machines in a casino? Or video poker on a cruise ship?

They design these games so that you win frequently. And you can get addicted to them… because at every opportunity, you have a good chance to win. (Of course, you lose all your money eventually because these games are rigged against you.)

This way of “winning,” where you have more wins more frequently, is more compelling to the way our minds work. It holds our attention… which is exactly why the casinos use the strategy in the first place.

But if you really want to get rich, you have to do the opposite. And that’s what we call making an asymmetric bet.

Asymmetric betting is when you win infrequently. Most of the time, you lose a little bit of money… or nothing happens at all. It’s very boring, predictable, and dull.

And then occasionally, you score a massive outsized gain.

This gain changes everything.

All your losses are erased 100 times over.

Many of the ideas I put my own money into operate this way. I expect to lose a little bit of money here and there… and I do. But occasionally, I’ll make an enormous winner.

One example is an investment I made in 2011 in bitcoin. It’s the now-famous digital “cryptocurrency” that was released in 2009.

At the time, no one in my network knew about this oddball investment. It was far too obscure… and far too small and speculative.

But this was a true asymmetric trade.

It took me an entire weekend fiddling around with computer equipment and software, and trading bitcoins around to friends, before I made that bet.

I invested $25,000. And at one point, I held 3,330 bitcoins.

I walked away with $500,000 from that investment in just over a year.

And if I still held them today, my bitcoins would be worth over $30 million.

So there you have an example of what can happen when you score an asymmetric gain. Any losses I had incurred paled in comparison with the win.

How to Structure Your Asymmetric Bets

The way to do this in practice is to set up 10 trades altogether… realizing that nine of them are probably going to lose money.

So if you have $10,000 to speculate on asymmetric bets, take 10 positions of $1,000. Most will lose a few hundred dollars. But that 10th trade may make you $10,000 or $100,000 or more.

So you see, placing smart, asymmetric bets over the long run can boost your average win rate.

It’s certainly not as comforting at “winning” at slots with every other press of the button. But it will make you a lot more money in the end.

Regards,

Tom Dyson,
Editor, Postcards From the Fringe

P.S. I have an urgent event going on TONIGHT at 8 p.m. ET. If you want to hear about a radical investment… one that I believe could potentially outperform every other asset class in the world… be sure to go here to sign up.

I’ll even be giving away one of my highest-conviction trades away, which investors will be able to act on right away. But time is of the essence. Go here to make sure you don’t miss out.

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