This article is one in a series looking at Jack Schwager’s classic investment books. The goal is to study interviews with famous traders and apply their wisdom to daily fantasy sports.
Today, Jim Rogers is known as the guy who wears bow ties when he makes appearances on CNBC from his home in Singapore. But at the time of his Market Wizards interview, he had recently retired from working with the legendary George Soros managing the Quantum Fund.
Since the release of Market Wizards, Rogers has authored six books covering a broad range of investing topics. He has also continued to invest his own money and appears to be spending his retirement working harder than most people who remain employed. Let’s take a closer look at three of the most iconic quotes from the entire Market Wizards series and see if we can apply some of his wisdom to DFS.
Target the Best Opportunities
What you just described is a very fast way to the poorhouse. I just wait until there is money lying in the corner, and all I have to do is go over there and pick it up. I do nothing in the meantime. Even people who lose money in the market say, “I just lost my money, now I have to do something to make it back.” No, you don’t. You should sit there until you find something.
This visual of “money laying in the corner” is often misconstrued to suggest that a trader or investor should be looking for only sure investments. Of course, having people come to you as if you’re Bobby Axelrod to offer an idea that they are “not uncertain” about doesn’t happen in real life. The second part of the quotation is the key. It is essential that you act only when you have good reason to believe the odds are in your favor.
Outside of maybe Clayton Kershaw, there aren’t any sure things in the world of DFS. But we can control how much exposure we have to each slate.
Our Player Models are great for helping us see if there’s DFS money lying in the corner. On some slates, you might find that your model has few players rated highly. If you’re a cash game player, these could be slates that you decide not to play. Other slates might feature many players with high ratings. These could be the slates in which you capitalize with more certainty.
Avoid Previous Slate Bias
Generals always fight the last war. Portfolio managers always invest in the last bull market.
As Rogers notes, we often make decisions in a backward-looking manner. He stresses that it is important to understand how past and current events can or will impact the future. In DFS, many players build lineups for the previous slate. We often allow recent performance to carry far too much weight in our lineup construction process.
One of the best ways to avoid letting a player’s recent performance (good or bad) have too much influence on your decision-making is to utilize our Trends tool to research ideas. By digging into the data, you will be more focused on finding players likely to perform well in the future, regardless of how they performed last slate.
Focus on Common Sense Solutions
Good investing is really just common sense. But it is astonishing how few people have common sense—how many people can look at the exact same scenario, the exact same facts, and not see what is going to happen. Ninety percent of them will focus on the same thing, but the good investor—or trader, to use your term—will see something else. The ability to get away from conventional wisdom is not very common.
Since his retirement, Rogers has become extremely popular in the financial world by appearing on television shows and simply stating the obvious. He has a brilliant way of pointing out exactly why the conventional wisdom is wrong in many different situations. He’s a common-sense contrarian.
Being contrarian is something that Labs Co-Founder Jonathan Bales talks about in almost every one of his books. By simply going against the consensus public opinion, you can often put yourself in a position to profit when the crowd is wrong.
One of the best ways to review your progress in this regard is to take advantage of our DFS Ownership Dashboard, which allows you to see in which assets the sharp high-stakes DFS players are investing. When they deviate from their low-stakes counterparts, they’re often bucking conventional thinking in a way that they view as common sense.
Rogers and DFS
Whether he is talking about picking up the money sitting in the corner, not fighting the last war, or simple common sense, Rogers brings an element of simplicity to the Market Wizards series that is almost artistic. His entire approach to trading involves sitting back and waiting for the perfect scenario.
By utilizing the Labs Tools and a little common sense of our own, we can take the same approach to breaking down each slate. With a little bit of careful practice and lots of additional research, you too will be on your way to becoming a DFS Market Wizard.
