Depending on how much of a sports fan you are, you may or may not have heard about NBA player Jeremy Lin. Well basically, in just over a week, this young man has become a global sports icon. Lin is a Taiwanese/Chinese-American who has set the basketball world on fire with his performances for the NBA's New York Knicks.
A little backstory: Lin led his California high school basketball team to a state title, but wasn't recruited by his hometown Stanford for college basketball. He basically had to squeak his way into the Harvard basketball program (certainly not a traditional powerhouse). After 4 good years at Harvard (graduating with an Econ degree), Lin went undrafted by the NBA and basically was the last man on the bench/first cut for a couple of teams. Until recently when the New York Knicks were in need of a point guard.
Given the opportunity to start for the Knicks, Lin has set New York City and the basketball world alight. 5 straight wins and great point guard statistics has led to him setting NBA records for players in their first career starts. And he is becoming the most buzzed about sports figure in America, Asia and other spots around the world.
From a motivational perspective, there are so many concepts to be gleaned from the amazing Jeremy Lin story. Never give up, strive to keep improving, take your opportunity when it is offered, etc. But also from the investment/trading/economics/business perspective there are a few things that can be paralleled:
The rise of modern social networking and global media can allow someone to become nearly a worldwide "household name" in an incredibly rapid amount of time. This has implications for companies, products, technology and marketing going forward into the future. Globalization is here to stay and companies that can/do reach multiple countries with their footprint will likely benefit the most. McDonald's (MCD) is an example of this type of company. The major ETF for trading the Chinese market is iShares FTSE China 25 Index ETF (FXI).
Headlines from New York to Asia in a little over a week!
Obviously the personal story of Lin is a testament to hard work, perseverance, and utilizing intelligence (his "basketball IQ" appears very high). But it also shows the short-sightedness and inability to think "outside the box" of many corporations (in this case the colleges and NBA teams who overlooked his potential to help a team win). It took 1 coach who had little to lose who took a chance on an untraditional player. This goes along with the investing/trading tenets of looking at things from a contrarian perspective and not being afraid to try out new indicators/methods/etc.
The use of Bill James-inspired Sabermetric statistics in baseball (see the book and movie Money Ball) is also another example of this oversight. Personnel people in various sports had always done things the same way ... there was big resistance for years to employing new computerized analytics in evaluating player/team performance. But the sabermetric/statistical approach has finally spread throughout the world of sports from baseball into European soccer/football and beyond.
And the similarity between technical analysis/charting/rules-based trading and sabermetric/statistical sports analysis is fairly obvious. For years the mainstream financial world said they ONLY used fundamental analysis and would NEVER use technical charting, despite any evidence that "the chart tells the tale". Now, after 10+ years of a choppy trading range, one sees charting and volatility analysis on CNBC every day.
Sports lessons are often good analogies for trading because of the defined win/loss nature and the clear concepts that can be gleaned from them. The rapid, astounding success of Jeremy Lin is just another example of this. Beyond what we've discussed here, you certainly may see implications for yourself, your career, your investing, etc. There is much more we could write about this developing story, but just the first week+ has already made interesting history.