Reading Michael Lewis' ‘Moneyball' just over a year ago, I thought the shrewdness of Billy Beane offered some great analogies for investors. As ‘Moneyball' recently hit the big screen I decided to pull out my copy (yes I still read paper books) and flipped back through the dog-eared pages to refresh my memory on what the game of baseball has to offer for investors.Moneyball focuses on the small-market franchise Oakland Athletics 2002 baseball season. That year, the team had one of the best winning percentages, despite having one of the smallest budgets in baseball. In the book, Billy Beane, the team's general manager hires Paul DePodesta, a statistical analyst, to sort through mountains of baseball stats to determine what makes great ball players. They would then use this knowledge to uncover hidden talent for cheap prices in the draft. There are a couple of great investing lessons to be gleaned from the story.One of the best lessons is the concept of contrarian thinking and value investing. In the book, Beane argues for drafting a “fat” catcher Jeremy Brown. Brown barely made the scouting list and most scouts viewed him as a poor out of shape ball player. The old-school scouts in the draft room continually bad mouthed the catcher calling him “soft body” and “fleshy”. Their impression, based on conventional wisdom was that Brown was “fat and growing fatter”. However, DePodesta's research found Brown to have valuable, and more importantly, overlooked attribute's he has the most walks in the country and better hitting numbers than “anyone's in the minor leagues”. DePodesta is a classic value investor. He has uncovered a player no one wants who is actually worth a lot more than what the market would suggest. In reference to Brown's physical appearance, Beane quite accurately quips, “We are not selling jeans”. The lesson here is to focus on what's important. Often ugly looking companies offer compelling value. It is often the case that their value is so great simply because conventional wisdom and investors are not looking at their true long term value and focusing on the more easily recognisable flaws that are less important than the really valuable stats.Another great lesson we can learn is how biased we are as humans and as investors. Looking back at DePodesta's thought process: “He was fascinated by irrationality, and the opportunities it created in human affairs for anyone who resisted it…..There was, for starters, the tendency of everyone who actually played the game to generalise from his own experience.” An example in the investing world may be your typical long-term investor experiencing what seems like perpetual double digit gains from 1982 to 2000. They may not have relevant experience for the secular sideways market we've witnessed over the last ten years. The book continues: “There was also a tendency to be overly influenced by a guy's most recent performance: what he did last was not necessarily what he would do next”. Apple has been one of the best stocks in the stock market over the past years but will it be the best stock over the next few years? Typically the top performing asset classes of the last several years become the bottom performing asset classes over the next few years. Further on he mentions “…there was a bias toward what people saw with their own eyes, or thought they had seen. The human mind played tricks on itself when it relied exclusively on what it saw, and every trick it played was a financial opportunity for someone who saw through the illusion to the reality”. For example, there was the often quoted adage in the mid-2000s that “house prices only go up” when in reality there were periods when they definitely didn't. The lesson here is that as human's we are wired with some inherent biases that make investing difficult. It's important to search for the facts and ignore your snap judgments or feelings.If you haven't already done so, I would encourage you to pick up (or download) a copy of Mr. Lewis's book. He is an excellent writer and the book is filled with many more lessons both on investing and life.