Data and Gut Feelings

Maybe many of you, at least our US readers, are already well versed in fantasy football (this refers to the American game, not the sport that just had its global World Cup competition), but I'm relatively new to it, just taking part for the second time this year.

After recently doing the draft of players for my fantasy team, it struck me how much the draft is like securities trading and requires a command of available data. In my league's draft, each participant got just 1 minute to make their pick when their turn came around.

Between picks, what you had at your disposal was your own previously created watchlist of players you were interested in; plus a live updated feed of players still available to choose from, ranked by perceived value, including an average of when they were picked in similar drafts; plus my own addition on another browser tab—a New York Times fantasy football evaluation that had tweet-length comments on individual players that could influence you one way or the other.

The live feed included that key piece of data—a number for the average position at which that player had been picked in previously held drafts on the system administering our league. So, for example, in a much later round I had the 139th overall pick, and consulting quickly with the live feed, chose Baltimore Ravens running back Bernard Pierce, who was on average chosen 122nd, but was still available in our draft. At that late stage, not knowing some of the more obscure players, that piece of data was a good reason for this choice—hoping I was getting a "steal" of some sort.

This is akin to reading data and concluding that a security is, in effect, undervalued, and worth buying. But you cannot discount qualitative analysis either. At pick number 42, I was looking for a wide receiver for my roster, and had two choices still available who were close in rank—Roddy White and Larry Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald had gone higher on average in drafts than White, but again, looking at qualitative analysis from the New York Times that I had at my fingertips, I saw these comments:

• On White: "Top 10 WR once fully healed in '13, poor defense will force tons of air time in '14."

• On Fitzgerald: "31 and likely final year with the Cards. Hasn't cracked 1,000 + yards since 2011."

I picked White. ... This is akin to doing research on a company itself and finding some piece of information about the product they are developing or the management culture that isn't necessarily evident in the stock price on a given day. You may say this requires some instinct and gut feeling as well—because one's interpretation of the facts can be subjective.

And in the securities reference data world, the object lesson of this is that risk management is not always binary choices, completely dictated by data. Experience, expertise and market knowledge are going to—or ought to—play a part.

For instance, let's take one more look at the late round pick of Bernard Pierce. In all honesty, I had him on that aforementioned watchlist—knowing that his teammate, running back Ray Rice, is suspended for the first two weeks of the season in a controversy that has made news outside the sports world. Pierce might rack up more stats with Rice absent then, so he has more value than even the average draft position showed. I wasn't going to waste an early round pick on him, but seeing him still available at that late round, I chose him above others that may have seemed like smarter picks if you only looked at raw data.

It's something to keep in mind as we head into the fall (and the actual, real football season). The most useful reference data is part hard numbers, part evaluation and qualitative knowledge.