One of the techniques that’s credited for the success of the British Olympic cycling team under Sir Dave Brailsford is an approach known as the aggregation of marginal gains. The argument is that by making small gains in many areas, the end result is significantly better.
Brailsford says that while going for gold seemed “too daunting” when he became performance director in 2003, the team was able to search for small improvements everywhere “and found countless opportunities”.
Team GB went on to win eight gold medals in cycling at Beijing in 2008 and another eight in London 2012. Having previously won just one since 1908, the change in the cycling team’s fortunes was marked.
Marginal gains in investing?
Not everyone agrees that marginal gains were responsible for the cycling team’s transformation, but for investors the maths is quite compelling.
1% gain each day for one year = 3,780% gain (corrected 16/1 – thanks to the many readers who pointed out this error)1% decline each day for one year = 97.5% lossHere at Stockopedia, we’re not looking to win any races. But we do want to find ways of producing investment results that have a consistent…
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