Fantasy Sports: The Art of the Trade

Welcome to my fourth installment in my fantasy articles wherein I will be talking about the art of the trade.

Generally, the reason players get traded away is because their owners are disappointed in their production, the fact that they are injured, or just because their owners developed a bad taste for a particular player.

The reason players get traded for is because an owner is keen on a player who is producing at a usually unsustainable level, or because an owner likes a particular player, (hometown favorite, perhaps?).

There is one golden rule that should always be followed when making a deal with another owner, and, really, it is quite simple.

Sell high, buy low.

That's it—no fancy method or steps, just this simple saying.

When you sell a player high, you are trading the player away because you think that he has hit a peak of performance that is unsustainably high, and, thus, will only perform worse later. 

The thinking behind this is that you have accumulated all of those crazy stats. When you trade them away, the other owner doesn't get credit for those same stats that you do; he gets the stats of the player going forward.

Now, when you are buying low, which you should always do, you are getting a player who has more than likely disappointed or failed to meet his expectations. 

But, again, remember that you are accumulating the stats from the day you get him going forward, and not getting the disappointing stats.  Common disappointers include players who have just gotten injured, or star players who have been slow out of the gates.

The bottom line is to sell players when they are too good to be true, and buy players when they are too bad to be true.