Agreed here as well. I think greed ruined all of us. I think many of us recognized the red flags. I did, but still had to side with the company. The only person I really bashed hard on the negative side of the thread was Craig, but that was not due to his opinions, but rather his understanding of discounted cash flows. I guess if anyone should be kicking themselves, it should be me. I should have known better more than anyone on this thread, but I was under the impression, based on many converstions, that a real audit was done by the prior firm. And I, like others, was blatantly lied to by the company.
But I'm not kicking myself. I knew the risks and I knew in Jan, Feb, March and April that by the end of May I would be rich or broke. Almost all of my posts basically ended with "either f/s correct or management went to jail." MY problem is that until now, I have never been screwed over by anyone, hence I was not nearly as critical as I should have been. I guess at times we believe what we wanted to believe and get blinders. Well, personally, I am kind of glad this whole GIFS thing blew up on me, except for the loss and the fact that I and others helped to facilitate lies by the company. What is sad is that in Mid-March I went to Iowa for a weekend. On the way there, for about 5 hours, I thought throught the whole GIFS thing, weighed the pros and cons. Based on what I knew, I figured chances were things were o.k. But it wasn't an easy decision. I guess I can fault my decision making process, but when you have fraudulent info, are being lied to, others are being lied to, and, at the time you have no reason to believe people are lying, it is difficult. My big problem -- I probably knew too much about the whole accounting/auditing arena. After all, I knew if they were audited, the procedures. I knew a Big Six would axe them in a minute if Fraud were present. And most of all, I knew going to a Big Six with Fraud was a sure way to invite a prison sentence. Problem here -- management did not act rationally, which screwed up my whole inductive and deductive logic theory. In essence, I probably outsmarted myself.
Since It happened, I am focusing a lot more energy on my tax practice and excavating businesses and will be much more well off as those endeavors blossom versus GIFS hitting $5 or $7 dollars. I no longer follow the markets -- don't really care. I am in good, safe, long-term stocks and mutual funds. I can make a whole heck of lot more money in other areas than playing russian roulette with stocks like GIFS. I'm too old for that kind of stuff at this point in life. It's time to settle down and go conservative. If I didn't lose a decent chunk on GIFS I am sure at the rate I, and others on this thread were going, we would lose the same amount on another "can't miss stock." If GIFS did hit the $3, $5, or $7 range, I am sure we all would have risked a lot of money in the next "can't miss stock" and we probably would miss. I think we will all admit we put more money in as we got addicted to this thing and convinced it was correct. Blinders are a bad thing. I was probably a somewhat objective person on the thread, but was unfortunately pro-company because I knew if things weren't correct, management would be in jail. If I knew of a criminal past, I would have been out in a minute.
A lot of people are laying blame, but I only blame myself. I wrote the check. I made the buy. I made the mistake. I should have been smart enought to know better. I am human and make mistakes, just like all of us. I can either dwell on it or move on.
In closing, here is a quote we can all relate to:
"A man who has committed a mistake
and doesn't correct it
is committing another mistake."
- Confucius
Everyone on this thread made a mistake. Everyone. I learned. From now on, unless there is a Big Six audit report, I will not buy a stock. That simple procedure would have saved all of us a ton of $$. And believe it or not, there are quite a few BB stocks that have Big Six audits. That alone is a good starting point.
Well -- have to watch the end of the Wings game and get back to work.
Goodnight all.
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