What the Tour de France Can Teach Us About Investing

Winning the Stage or the Tour?

The Race of a Lifetime

The Tour De France recently concluded on July 29th on the iconic Champs-Elysees in Paris, France. A total of 176 racers across 22 teams participated in this historic event of cycling endurance. The race covered roughly 2200 miles traversing multiple landscapes including mountain ranges and endless hillsides. Simply finishing is a monumental feat to be celebrated.

There are 21 stage races that comprise the Tour de France. The top place finishers in each stage are awarded points. Eddy Merckx, a cyclist from Belgium, is among the three riders to have won the most stages in any single tour – 8 of the 21 stages in 1970 and 1974 winning both tours. If you asked Eddy about his winning strategy he’d probably tell you that consistency counts.

But here is something interesting: Three-time Tour champion, Greg ‘LeMonster’ LeMond, won the Tour in 1990 without winning a single stage. This isn’t an anomaly either – five other cyclists have won the Tour without winning a single stage.

Riders don’t have to win every stage, or any of them, to come out on top.

As an advisor, it’s important to keep this in mind. You don’t need to win every week, every month, every quarter, or even every year to end up on the podium. In fact, trying to keep up with each day’s winner can be counter-productive to long-term success. It will even burn you out.

Signature of Success

One of the marks of a successful athlete is the ability to pace their own race, regardless of what’s happening around them. They are disciplined in their focus, liberating their will to succeed of any external influences or distractions that could potentially derail their strategy.

There will be times when self-doubt kicks in tempting you to abandon plans or dump a strategy that is presumably unfavorable. But the wheel has already been invented, which is this: have a detailed, customized investment plan in place for up markets and for down markets – and stick with it.

Having the plan mapped out will help take the emotion out of decisions and allow you to adapt rather than react to change.

Remember: you don’t have to win every race to make it to the podium of your goals.

If you would like to read more about investment strategy, I invite you to download this free whitepaper discussing how an innovative allocation process can fundamentally shift how you invest. 20 minutes of your time could save you 80 hours of unnecessary headache in your year to come.

All the Best,

Greg Luken

615-550-5570
service@lukenanalytics.com