Re Joel : ( They may be true, they may be false, but I am merely posting what I have heard. )
"... I am merely posting what I have heard."
Yes, I'm sure that is true. The problem I have with it, is you never seem to post anything good about IOM. I'm sure there must be some "boutique research" outfits that produce good news faxes about IOM. They may be true, they may be false, but I am sure you will never post them, because your company does not want them posted. They are at cross purposes to your avowed position. It is impossible for us to even know whether your company gets a reasonable cross section of all available information, or if it just subscribes to "boutique research" with pre-established positions that agree with yours. Since there is good news about IOM every day, and none of it comes from you, your "bad news bear" routine has to be viewed with a jaundiced eye. Many of the bulls here qualify their bullish comments. They interject cautionary statements, they acknowledge uncertainty, they admit they could be wrong. They do all these things on a regular basis. Those that do this, have credibility, even with you. When you start doing the same, you will start to regain some credibility with us. When you have done it for 6 months, you will have tremendous credibility.
" They may be true, they may be false"
This is other part I don't like: you exhibit a stunning lack of curiosity as to whether your bad news posts are true or false. The I'm-just-posting-what-I've-heard excuse would be believable if you were a balanced poster of IOM news. But you hope the bad news is true, and don't care if it is false. A truly ethical person cares more about the truth than to recklessly post damaging rumors without trying to verify them first. And a truly ethical person does not use the process of verification itself to set up an ethical trap for someone else, as you did to Allen.
Putting it all together, you, Joel are a perfect example of why longs often wonder if shorting isn't immoral. While both sides trumpet favorable news and downplay the unfavorable (to their respective positions), longs don't see this as a zero-sum game. We want to see a company succeed and wealth created. But the tactics used by shorts are often indistinguishable from those used by someone who means to actually destroy the company. Joel, if you just sounded like someone trying to play the inevitable dips in a stock, we'd all understand. But you really sound like you'd like to see IOM destroyed tomorrow, just to collect your miserable $20/shr. And you won't rest until that day comes. If your reply is "Why, my dear boy, what more effective tactics could we use to get our dips?", then let me ask you, where is your honesty, integrity and ethics now? And if those qualities have nothing to do with your company's operations, as we longs believe, then please do not beat your breast so loudly the next time someone you have dealings with shows an ethical lapse which is 1/1000th the size of your (or your company's) average daily ethical lapse. |
