Early Bird Catches The Worm

I was reading an article on Bloomberg this morning about STX, a ship building company from South Korea, suffering huge losses due to the slow down in import of commodities from around the world to China.  STX saw an opportunity to enter the fray due to the continued economic boom in China then, or so they thought.

This brings to my mind Sun Tze's art of war.  When STX entered the race to build ships in China, the China market is already booming for some time.  So, it was a late comer, and naturally what it picked up in business might just be the crumb of the trade.  

In any business, or ventures, be it speculating (not investing) in shares, or starting a new business, all else being equal, the ones who started first will usually be the ones to enjoy success, not late comers.   This is evident especially in MLM (multi-level marketing), where someone else can just introduce several new products to the same market, offering more lucrative reward schemes to induce migration of agents to them.  I have seen this countless number of times, and observe how a flourishing business be reduced to one of merely surviving concern, when a key agent just migrates to their competitor.   This is after all a dog eat dog world.  

The saying goes, in good times, think of the bad.   For, sooner than expected, it might just be at the door step.