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As strange as it sounds, there are many parallels that can be made between savvy investing and fantasy football.

While it’s fun to piece together these make-believe teams and compete amongst friends, there’s a lot to be learned about controlling emotions and managing expectations through fantasy football, and how that ultimately relates directly to investment habits.

Allow me to set this scene: At the end of August you’ve drafted what you believe to be a stellar group of football players who together comprise the best team in your fantasy league — at least on paper.

But when it’s early November and that “great team on paper” is ranked near the bottom, every week it seems your team falls further and further behind. Your bench players are scoring more points than your starters. You’re so far out of the race other players are telling you to quit and start building for next year.

But in your mind, you fully expected to win it all this year.

Which is exactly what investors want to do each and every year.

After another week of horrible numbers, you decide it’s time to make changes to your team. You waive a running back who is struggling and two receivers who can’t seem to catch a pass. At the draft, you selected these guys to be the heart of your team, but it seems like these players are instead now weighing your team down! Week after week through September and October, they just weren’t getting the job done.

So you choose to waive them for the hottest rookie running back around, along with two receivers who have been stuffing the stats sheet.

Nice move? Fast forward to December, the end of the season.

After the season ends, the entire football community (players, media and fans) rave about the amazing comebacks of the player you waived in November. The running backs found their stride and those “dog” receivers finally found their “stickum” in the second half. At the end of the season, the stats for these three players turned out to be exactly what they were projected to be.

Unfortunately, these players were tossed away before they could do the job they were hired to do. And, as they say on TV, “but wait, there’s more….”

That hot rookie running back you traded a bottle of Crown Royal for? He ends up breaking his leg the week after you acquired him. Tough break for you since he’s out for the season. Then the world discovers that the replacement receivers you picked up are busts in their own right; one is a steroid-abuser and the other busted for gambling.

So you as the fantasy manager have virtually wrecked your team and destroyed any chances of winning by becoming emotional and impatient.

I’m here to tell you that investors regularly do the same thing with their investments.

Investors get restless. They make emotionally-fueled decisions. They want to modify their investment habits. Sometimes, after three months of no gains, folks are ready to rip up their investments and move in a completely new direction. After six months of inaction (or losses) some folks want to change everything. It’s very tempting to make changes, especially when it “appears” nothing is happening with your investment account. This is what we lovingly call in the business “a trap.”

Today’s volatile market environment only gets more unpredictable because it’s so easy to simply dump whatever we feel is no longer working. People can now swipe an app on their cell phone and change up their investments. Investments for many have adapted a “disposable” feel to them. Again, it’s a trap.

The fantasy football manager drafts the stud running back and the big-time receivers because year after year they posted predictable performances. But when they got off to slow starts, those players were dumped. Maybe they were dumped in a futile effort to keep up with the rest of the league. Maybe they were dumped because the fantasy manager thought they were no longer going to post predictable numbers. There was no “hard truth” — emotions superseded facts, the players were waived, the team suffered.

Whether you’re dabbling in fantasy football or ruminating over your investment habits, remember that human emotion and self-guided impatience will always move you to make unbalanced decisions, which will ultimately draw you closer to the trap.

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