Post by
lord_elpus on Feb 17, 2008 7:08pm
I think this is the root cause
The sickness that sets in on these threads is driven by the more base human emotions. We all feel fear, greed, and envy. These are all destructive of course.
Whilst fear gives us warning and sometimes protects us, it also causes us to act irrationally.
Whilst Gordon Gekko told us that "Greed is good" he neglected to tell us that greed also prevents us from taking profits at the appropriate time.
But the most wasteful of all base emotions is envy. What possible advantage can it give us? What does envy help us with? Personally I see no advantage to it, it does not lead to individuals spending time and energy raising themselves up but sadly they use all their efforts to pull others down. They can gain nothing and yet this is the path they choose, it tells you something about the judgement of people who go down this path.
What am I saying all this for I hear you ask?
In mid Jan this year we all took a dive thanks to our friends in the US and the DOW. Markets around the world dived. EXT and BAN both were hit hard. EXT dropped below 60 cents (Australian) and BAN dropped to the mid AUS$2.20's
People who knew the fundamental value of their stocks weren't silly enough to panic-sell they hung in there.
Now we are at a place where EXT has dramatically recovered, last trading on the ASX at $1.30 (up over 100% since the crash) and BAN (BMN) last traded at AUS$2.45 up about 8% since the crash.
The mature long term holders of BAN know they are on a winner and are not phased by a temporary glitch. They know they have a resource that is in demand with demand only rising over years to come. They are not looking at other companies and feeling envy because they are secure in themselves.
Some BAN holders are different. They feel anger, envy, and raft of other negative emotions and rather than feel secure they decide to create mischief amongst other stocks, to try and tear down other people's good fortune. What can they personally gain? Well not much, nothing really, but it is good to understand the personality type of the person whose words you are reading.
I can't stop these people spending their time as they see fit but I can point out that they are simply jealous.