Market Inefficiencies

Market Inefficiencies

The concept of market inefficiencies was something which originally came my way through reading about Mark Cuban’s strategy in building his basketball team. The condensed version is that Cuban always tried to diagnose what “everyone” was doing and then do the opposite to exploit the value ignored by others. The Business Dictionary’s website defines Market Inefficiency as a:  “Situation where the current prices do not reflect all the publicly available demand and supply information, due to negligence or breakdown of buyer-seller communications.”

Basically something is over or under valued due to incorrect or misinterpreted information.  As MMA has had more and more of a history, there are coaches who have tried to go back and reverse engineer best practices for the future based on what has worked in the past.  In most cases these coaches have their fighters working on something the rest of the world has already figured out how to counter.

In other cases, especially Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, there are instances where market inefficiencies will remain for a long time due to instructor’s ignorance or lack of preference for a technique causing them to discourage the practice of it.  Throughout the history of BJJ leg locks have been a perfect example of going against the mainstream and getting maximum benefit.

Take a moment and analyze your field.  Write down all the common knowledge and best practices and look for where you can take advantage.