What Henry V Can Teach Us About Trading Edge
Outnumbered 3 to 1, Henry V Won by Choosing His Ground. Here's the Lesson for Traders
Picture this…
It’s late October, 1415, in Northern France.
You’re Henry V, marching your depleted, sick, and exhausted army back to Calais.
The French are hot on your tail… desperate to finish you off.
You’re outnumbered 3 to 1 by well-armed knights, cavalry, and fresh soldiers looking for any excuse to wipe out the English army.
So what do you do?
BATTLE OF AGINCOURT
Now Henry knew that on paper, his army faced certain defeat.
But being a smart guy, he also knew he had an edge…
So, he positioned his troops on a freshly ploughed field, soaked by recent rainfall, in a narrow gap between two woods.
This did two things.
- It funnelled the French into the gap, so their greater numbers couldn’t spread out. Army size edge… gone.
- The waterlogged field meant the heavily armoured French knights, advancing on foot, got bogged down, tired, and stuck. The horses didn’t fare much better. Equipment edge… gone.
This quagmire-filled bottleneck meant the English bowmen could fire volley after volley into the packed French ranks.
And the more the French advanced, the easier the targets became.
Henry V won that day. Despite the odds being massively stacked against him.
All because he knew where his advantages lay…
Sound familiar?!
Know your edge.
We can’t compete on capital size.
We can’t compete on resources or technology.
And we certainly can’t win at everything.
But if we can find that clearing… the terrain that plays to our strengths… and wait for the right moment to strike…then we don’t need big resources.
We just need to know what we’re good at, and when to strike.
Because unlike Henry V on that day, we can pick our trading battles and how we choose to fight them.