Copy and Paste : The Falcon's response to my post on the role of belief's in markets

In response to the prior musing, my friend "The Falcon" added

The Melbourne Cup reference is an interesting one - and for this reason:

" Imagine if every single punter at the Melbourne Cup this year placed
their bet on the apparently irrefutable communal belief that only even
numbered horses win races... it would considerably alter the market's
pricing dynamics. "

The result would be mis-pricing in betting markets - however, the result
of the race itself would remain unaffected.

The scary thing is - if the same latent human desires create misguided
human beliefes in the market place then the result is a grave
misallocation of so called scarce resources.

Then again - maybe my desire to have resources optimally allocated is
feeding some evolutionary drive that has been with me since I first
climbed out of the slime millions and millions of years ago....