People, I had to post this.....funny.   Was going over Zack's research and noted IOC and FGP were their top energy picks.  Thought I'd see what was going on in FGP, and lo and behold, a poster mentions Bonk and his basher crew, wondering where they had gone or what happened to them..  Evidently, Bonk and crew were working that stock, FGP for the same shorts as IOC.  The poster is named Crotan1 and the post is on 6/6/13 entitled "What has happened to Bonk and Crew".   IMO, a little evidence that he's a loser, no matter how smooth he seems at times to some.  Check it out....

'trans' pid='25713' datel Wrote:

People, I had to post this.....funny.   Was going over Zack's research and noted IOC and FGP were their top energy picks.  Thought I'd see what was going on in FGP, and lo and behold, a poster mentions Bonk and his basher crew, wondering where they had gone or what happened to them..  Evidently, Bonk and crew were working that stock, FGP for the same shorts as IOC.  The poster is named Crotan1 and the post is on 6/6/13 entitled "What has happened to Bonk and Crew".   IMO, a little evidence that he's a loser, no matter how smooth he seems at times to some.  Check it out....     I agree totally about Bonk..He is entirely and totally 100% intellectually DISHONEST...I am so glad he was not allowed to begin posting here as membership prevented by vote ...He chooses to ignore all TRUE FACTS and perpetuate many myths...Like a wonderful garden and its rich soil, hearty plants growing and all else that are readily apparent,,,,he would attempt to have all who view it try to concentrate their eyes on the few weeds that maybe the tiller had missed.(real or imaginery!).He is a self promottng cancer, and with any cancer you cut it out or destroy it in any fashion that works....I so look forward to that burbot being put to rest as the IOC PPS rises to historic neww highs..This will happen..Hopefully soon..patience is a virtue..

Aren't we're going a bit overboard here?

Whether someone is a 'loser' can't be determined from one or two positions. Take shareholdersunite.com recommendations, one could argue SHU is a loser if you take the two dogs (OCZ down 74.5% and STP(!) down 42%). But both revealed accounting "issues" after the buy recommendations which, accountants have assured me, would have been very difficult even for them to spot.

Alternatively, one could argue SHU is brilliant on the basis of the two best performing ones (SPWR up nearly 500% in less than a year and CTRP up more than 150%).

You would be wrong on both assessments.

And whether Bonk ignores all true facts, dunno about that. For sure he's biased, but we're all biased. We ALL work with mental models of reality and tend to fill in the gaps with things that confirm, rather than contradict that mental map, and there are myriad other ways in which your own mind plays tricks on you. If you don't believe me read any treatise on behavioural finance. We're even often deeply mistaken about our own desires, read the excellent "Stumbling on Happiness" from Daniel Gilbert.

The trick for investors is to be aware of the biases in one's own mental models. Hyperventilating in the face of critics, whatever their motives or shortcomings, isn't very useful, in fact quite the contrary. Different opinions can serve a useful purpose in revealing the shortcomings in one's own assumptions and models.

I've never been scared by contradictory opinons, I engage with them, perhaps there is something I can learn. I also do take them on if I see weaknesses in them, or point out they lack substantiation (as in Tilson's case).

Hyperventilating isn't productive, but that's just my 2c.

'admin' pid='25737' datel Wrote:

Aren't we're going a bit overboard here?

Whether someone is a 'loser' can't be determined from one or two positions. Take shareholdersunite.com recommendations, one could argue SHU is a loser if you take the two dogs (OCZ down 74.5% and STP(!) down 42%). But both revealed accounting "issues" after the buy recommendations which, accountants have assured me, would have been very difficult even for them to spot.

Alternatively, one could argue SHU is brilliant on the basis of the two best performing ones (SPWR up nearly 500% in less than a year and CTRP up more than 150%).

You would be wrong on both assessments.

And whether Bonk ignores all true facts, dunno about that. For sure he's biased, but we're all biased. We ALL work with mental models of reality and tend to fill in the gaps with things that confirm, rather than contradict that mental map, and there are myriad other ways in which your own mind plays tricks on you. If you don't believe me read any treatise on behavioural finance. We're even often deeply mistaken about our own desires, read the excellent "Stumbling on Happiness" from Daniel Gilbert.                           That would only be true if one had true intellectual Honesty STP..A paid hack as I could nearly guarantee who puts out small if any truth is where you give that man too much credit...Kinda like George Zimmermen and what the RULERS actually had planned if they had it THEIR WAY..Thank God for the Constitution and six women that could cut through the bs and what the gang had hoped for a predetermined outcome and for POLITICAL reasons..Thing such as Obama and TRAYVON would look like me if I had a son!  Just crap when it came down to motives on why the case was EVER was brought to start...Sorry for the analogy, but just so glad that cancer Bonk can not spread his much bs on this board..

The trick for investors is to be aware of the biases in one's own mental models. Hyperventilating in the face of critics, whatever their motives or shortcomings, isn't very useful, in fact quite the contrary. Different opinions can serve a useful purpose in revealing the shortcomings in one's own assumptions and models.

I've never been scared by contradictory opinons, I engage with them, perhaps there is something I can learn. I also do take them on if I see weaknesses in them, or point out they lack substantiation (as in Tilson's case).

Hyperventilating isn't productive, but that's just my 2c.

Confirmation bias: Fact or flawed presumption?

(See? I started with an interrogative. Always a sound technique. You just asked a question, revealing nothing of your own convictions.)

Do otherwise intelligent people fall victim to "confirmation bias"?

My proposition is that they do not. Implicit in my premise is that we are dealing with "intelligent" people. Faced with overwhelming evidence that a previously held conviction was flat-out wrong, an intelligent person will reason that, oops!, I have erred in my hypothesis, and I need to reconsider and act accordingly.

Consider an investor who performs due diligence and finds a company that has great unexplored potential for growth.  Our investor invests.
That investor sees his chosen stock drop precipitously, for no apparent reason. No bad news, no apocalyptic event, no sector weakness, no technical-analysis warnings of looming doom.

How does our "intelligent" investor respond? Sell defensively? Or buy aggressively?

Due diligence means plumbing every possible source for hard data, for information, clues, seeking insight from all sources. The process is never-ending, with any investment, blue-chip or beta. If you don't watch closely, you can get sandbagged.

In the course of our investor's due diligence, he encounters denizens of the deep. They cast large shadows and foretell gloom and doom, using various and sundry tactics like a simple -- but plausible -- twist of truth.

A whale shark has a five-foot-wide mouth, more than 300 teeth, and lives about a century. It is among the biggest sea creatures -- yet it eats, lives on, survives by consuming the smallest.

In the world of investing, the smallest are the retail investors. Many of them are simply trying to pay their bills, some want to ensure their "golden years" are not fuelled by fried bologna, or cat food on sale.

In my scenario, the whale sharks are the touts -- boiler-room zit-faced brats or grizzled pros -- or cons. You know their false names and motives, and they are undeserving of mention here. Their menial task is to create doubt, to introduce the spectre of failure to our investor, who has otherwise performed in a dutiful fashion but finds the whale sharks' smeared feces on a wall of lies, distortions, deceit, twisted and perverted logic.

It seems to me that, with the mirror of independent thought from other intelligent investors, the concept of "confirmation bias" is immediately dissolved. It could not survive, in my view, without the Kool-Aid. And intelligent investors don't drink that.

Ergo, the whale sharks -- while a significant part of the investing eco-system -- have no useful function as contributors to this message board. They have, and they ruthlessly employ, other media on which to spread their feces.

No thank you. Not here, please.
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'admin' pid='25740' datel Wrote:Piece of advice. If you use the reply function, which reproduces the post you're replying to, post your own answer AFTER the