Clueless, wrong, and proceeding with cataclysmically poor judgement: this is how the faithful contestants of this year’s Celebrity Traitors will be remembered.
For those yet to watch the BBC television series, please stop reading now – there are spoilers ahead.
As a keen watcher of the show, it is rare to see the same traitors remain intact for the entire series. Typically blind luck eliminates one early, with recruitments required to replenish the treacherous pool.
But in the celebrity version, Jonathan Ross, Cat Burns and Alan Carr performed so well in their ne’er-do-well adventure that they never needed reinforcements. Two of the three made it to the final episode, with Carr ending up scooping the entire prize pot for his charity: Neuroblastoma UK.
Part of this was thanks to how expertly they played their roles, but the other reason was the sheer ineptitude of the faithful, who grasped at straws, rarely stuck to one theory and were swayed by what happened in the short term, rather than thinking about the longer game.
Even Nick Mohammed, who seemed the most logically minded of the group (sorry Joe Marler), was swayed at the end by dumbfounding logic, leading to him voting for Marler instead of Carr.
The game itself is one of social deduction. It is, at its heart, an experiment on the human psyche.
Is investing not the same? We convince ourselves we know more than others, but in reality we can be easily swayed by momentum and are prone to making short-term decisions that are much higher risk.
While it can lead to a big winner, it can (and I would argue is more likely to) also lead to failure. This is the case in the Traitors too. Although going big with accusations can get a traitor out, more often than not it leads to eliminating more faithfuls from the game, as was evidenced in this series in particular.
So what can investors learn?
The Traitors is a fascinating insight into how people think. When it came to voting, many around the table were sheep following the herd. Similarly, investing can feel like too many people crowding around the same ideas.
That is not to say they cannot be right. After all, the artificial intelligence (AI) boom has been extremely beneficial for anyone who invested heavily early on.
Now, however, it feels much more risky to follow the crowd.
Like with dwindling numbers in the Traitors, the more money goes into one theme, the greater the need to make better choices. Investing now could still be worthwhile, but the risk of getting it wrong will be far more pronounced.
Stock markets are also a large game of human psychology. To win, sometimes it is beneficial to step back from the herd and the short-term noise and to focus on the evidence in front of you.
However you invest, basing your decisions on fundamentals, research and empirical data will lead to far better outcomes than going along with the whims of others.
The faithfuls may have been outplayed, but investors don’t have to be. Keep your emotions in check, avoid the herd, and remember: in markets as in murder games, it pays to think one step ahead.