Playing to Win Still Matters in Football, the Markets and the Economy

We keep score because winning and losing matter, although our approach must be tempered with good sportsmanship and fairness. It's the basis for building a stronger America. No one likes to lose, but it's a daily reality in life. Do you think winning and losing has mattered to Alabama football players, coaches and fans over its 100+ year history? 

While winning and losing is the bottom line in the economic world, it's the score that dictates our level of success. Does it matter that Apple has become the largest publicly traded company, or that Microsoft dominates computer operating systems? Why do you think you can travel anywhere and find a Wal-Mart or McDonald's nearby? Obviously, the shareholders of these companies thought the score mattered when it came time to buy or not buy the company's stock. Otherwise, why do we keep track of the DJIA, S&P 500, the Russell's, the Barclay Aggregate Bond Indexes or the MSCI? Don't services such as Morningstar rank mutual funds and ETFs, expenses, strategies, etc., daily? As advisors, don't your clients care about their portfolio returns relative to the market?  

My point is – like it or not – keeping score relates to almost everything in life. Your education, career growth, salary, bonus, the size of your house, the number of cars you own, how much you donate to charity and more – is all measured through some scoring analysis. So it's ludicrous to think that keeping score doesn't have a foundation in our economically based society. Do Coach Nick Saban and Alabama football care about the score in each game? Of course, because the score illustrates how well both the offense and defense executed their strategy during the game.  

However, with football just as with the market, past performance is not a predictor of future results. The Alabama football team won 11 national championships by the end of 1979, acquiring their 12^th in 1992, with numbers 13 and 14 coming more recently. Yet if they sat back and relied on history to dictate their future, they would probably still be reminiscing about the last championship won in 1979! As a country and society, we are no different. While it's important to record who wins the White House or who trades places in Congress come November, those scores won't guarantee our destiny. While Alabama has 14 titles, they still play every Saturday to keep building on their achievements. 

The question is what are you and I going to do over the next 20 to 30 years to help determine if we dominate the next 100 years of economic history? When we look at our nation's past, we see the rise to prosperity and our hard-fought advancement to become the global economic leader. For near-term and future success, it's time our government recalibrates its mindset to help people win by giving them a hand up, not a hand out.