A friend also relate his story to me. He did follow analyst advice many years before until he discover a "highly promising buy call" from almost all analysts and the counters fell into the ditch a year later. After that episode, he never trust their words anymore, and his winnings thereafter are all base on waiting fundamentally strong to come out of their slumber. It really pay off!
- It’s a place where logic, as I’ve learned over the years, doesn’t always matter.
- It’s a place where the priorities are out of order – making fast money and evangelizing big investors is on the top of this priority list. The small investor, I think, does not exist at all!
- It’s a place where analysts are able (and are paid) to find stocks that are “good values at any price” and stocks the values of which will “perpetually rise”.
- It’s a place where daylight robbery happens in the plain sight of everyone, from investors to regulators – and no one seem to mind.
- It’s a place where you are counted among the few foolish if you try to stay objective.
- It’s a place where dealing with small investors is considered a wastage of time – that distracts the analyst from “doing research”, and siphons off time that otherwise might be used to serve big, institutional clients and win “best analyst” votes.
- It’s a place where “risk” is thrown out of the window…literally!
- It’s a place where “warnings”, “worst case scenarios”, and other details that institutional clients read and take time to understand never make it to the regular folks (people like you and me).
- It’s a place where the only game they play is called “expectations”, and reality, even when it bites, never gets etched in the mind.
- It’s the only place where trees rise to the skies.
- It’s a place filled with misplaced belief that analysts seem to have the magic wand to reverse a stock’s decline, simply by saying it wasn’t so.
- It’s a place where information travels unevenly. Of course, the small investor gets the least information, and gets it last!
- It’s a place with so many disappointments and reversals that at the end of a few years, you lose the ability to be shocked by anything.
- It’s a place where, as you gain experience, you lose your powers of rational thinking.
- It’s a place where, if you have some sanity left, you will add a line in your valuation model that reads – “adjustment for irrational exuberance”.
- It’s a place where the small investor is playing a loser’s game.
- It’s a place where your obligation to be independent isn’t economically logical, especially when you are working with a broking firm whose primary purpose is to maximize profits.
- It’s a place filled with “smart” men and women who know the price of everything, but the value of nothing.
- It’s a place where two types of people meet up in the morning: those with experience and those with money. At the end of each day, those who had experience have the money, and those who had money have the experience.
- It’s a place where they fool people.
"Think independently and don’t let yourself be influenced by the “noise”. Stay focused on analysis, valuation, and margin of safety. Despite all its ills, the stock market is still a place where you, if you can keep your head when others around you are losing their’s, you can achieve your financial freedom."
