Reality TV shows have made an art form of showing off some of our human failings.

So here is an idea for a new TV investment reality show:

When it comes to investing we all have a few regrets. There was that fund or share that was cheap that you passed on, the property you baulked on at the last bid that is worth three times that now.

So instead of sitting around watching a bunch of overweight people sweat and grunt the kilos off we could sit around and listen to people explain the ways they found to lose money - everything from sending money to overseas bank accounts on the strength of a sales call about a hot stock tip or putting money into a scheme offering 8% return a week...

If you think this is fantasy TV rather than reality and no-one could fall for ideas like this visit ASIC's consumer website www.fido.asic.gov.au andcheck out the pie-in-the-sky awards.

Learning from other's mistakes is a powerful way of learning but perhaps it would not be dramatic enough for television so we could build the tension by getting our finalists to invest $500,000. They have to pick from a range of investment options. But to really test our contestants we would get some of the best sales people in the land to argue the case of each investment scheme. And the sales people would be rewarded with commissions that get higher and higher according to the amount of risk the investment involves. That should add a bit of real-world drama and possibly spin-off its own cult TV program - Desperate Salesmen

Like a lot of things in life investing is as much about the things you choose not to do as the things you do.

Charles Ellis founded one of the top investment consulting firms Greenwich Associates more than 30 years ago. He drew on years of advising some of the biggest investment companies in the world when he wrote his book Winning the Losers Game. Regarded as a modern investment classic, professional and personal investors alike have hailed his insights for their clarity and common sense.

When Ellis talks about a losers game he is not referring to people making bad investments and losing money - although that is the usual result. Rather he uses a tennis analogy to define losers game.

For most social tennis players keeping the ball alive and in play is what you have to do to win - your opponent will lose by mis-hitting or double faulting. So the contest is not won by one brilliant high-risk shot but rather lost by your opponent making a mistake.

One of the fundamental truths that Ellis and other great investors like Warren Buffett regularly talk about is the need to understand what it is you are investing in. Buffett candidly admits he does not understand - much less use - a lot of modern technology so he has to live with the regret of not buying Microsoft shares run by his good friend Bill Gates.

The collapse of the property group Westpoint again raises the simple question about whether investors understood the risks they were taking on with mezzanine property finance.

The simple reality is that investors - and often their advisers - focus most of their time on the potential return and the bigger the potential reward the bigger the chance that we will turn a blind eye to the risks.

Of course the opposite ought to be the case: the bigger the potential reward the more cynical we should be as investors. Term deposits with our major banks provide a fair benchmark for risk and return. The promise of returns dramatically higher than short-term interest rates cannot escape the reality of higher risk.

We saw it with Estate Mortgage, Pyramid Building Society and now Westpoint.

So risk ought to be at the top of an investor's check list when considering a new investment - particularly one that is heading into the realm of being too good to be true.

It is even easier to underestimate risk when sharemarkets are performing strongly as they have in recent years.

But if you do not keep one eye firmly fixed on the risks you may find yourself playing the reality game no-one wants to win - The Biggest Loser.