“A golden bait hung temptingly out before the people, and one after the other, they rushed to the tulip-marts, like flies around a honey pot. Nobles, citizens, farmers, mechanics, sea-men, footmen, maid-servants, even chimney-sweeps and old clothes-women, dabbled in tulips.”
— Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
In the mid-1600s, tulips had become all the rage in Europe.
The flower first made its way to the continent from the Asian steppes by way of the ancient Silk Road trade routes. Its exotic fragrance, bell shape, and bright, bold hues of pink, orange, yellow, and red were unlike anything else Europe had ever seen before. Demand amongst aristocrats skyrocketed. However, the flower required meticulous care to thrive in the colder climate.
Seizing an opportunity, local cultivators in Holland quickly learned to grow tulip bulbs that could withstand the harsher Dutch weather. Soon after, a thriving flower market unlike any the world would ever see again grew out of nowhere. Top flower cultivators could command huge prices for the heartier varieties, fetching over six times the average Dutchman’s annual salary for a single extra-rare bulb.
I don’t know how much you make a year, but imagine paying six times that for one flower!
Demand and prices for tulips were so high that cultivators needed a way to hedge against unforeseen headwinds, such as bad weather or pests resulting in a less bountiful harvest. This need to protect their explosively popular industry spawned one of the first speculative trading markets ever.
To hedge risk in case of a bad harvest or profit a little extra in light of good flower yields, tulip wholesalers began to trade speculative tulips futures contracts. At first, the trading of these contracts correlated very closely to the price of the actual tulip bulbs. But as demand continued to surge year after year, traders of these contracts found that their gains were often 10, 50, or even 100 times more than the value of the flower itself.
A secondary market for tulips had officially emerged. This gave everyone from noblemen and women to average townsfolk the chance to get a slice of the incredible wealth at hand. In fact, it was not unheard of for families to use their entire fortunes to speculate on the tulip bulb market.
Imagine being a normal tavern owner and waking up the next day as rich as the nobility themselves!
Much like the tulip futures market created vast wealth for everyday folks, the basic principles behind this amazing story can still be applied to today’s stock markets in a very similar way to produce incredible profits off relatively small investments.
Let me show you how.
Asymmetric Profits — an Investor’s Dream Come True
First, I have a question.
Would you spend $86 to make $340?
The reason I ask is because this is exactly what traders who use my Asymmetric Profits system were able to do just a few months back. It was a trade I uncovered in the world’s most popular coffee brand, Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX).
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But here’s the really cool thing for any reader who multiplied their investment: They also exponentially increased their returns. For example, in this same trade, if you had invested $860, it would have become $3,400, and an investment of $8,600 would have become $34,000…
All from just a single small trade made at the right time with the right asset.
That kind of money could seriously change someone’s life.
It could insulate you from ever worrying about the things most people have to worry about: retirement, your future, your kids’ futures…
Much like it changed many everyday Dutch citizens’ lives when they used these same basic principles to strike it rich on Dutch tulips.
That’s the power of asymmetry in its simplest form.
And now I’m unveiling my personal Asymmetric Profits strategy to unleash over 49 times the normal returns you get on an average stock gain.
This is hands down the best way to trade the markets I’ve ever seen, no matter if it’s bearish, bullish, or flat.
To your wealth,
Sean McCloskey
Editor, Energy and Capital
@TheRL_McCloskey on TwitterAfter spending 10 years in the consumer tech reporting and educational publishing industries, Sean has since redevoted himself to one of his original passions: identifying and cashing in on the most lucrative opportunities the market has to offer. As the former managing editor of multiple investment newsletters, he's covered virtually every sector of the market, ranging from energy and tech to gold and cannabis. Over the years, Sean has offered his followers the chance to score numerous triple-digit gains, and today he continues his mission to deliver followers the best chance to score big wins on Wall Street and beyond as an editor for Energy and Capital.
