Paul, I made 2 clear mistakes with HRC: After posting several message about a year an a half ago warning of the potential of some capricious change in medicare reimbursement seriously damaging the profit picture, I later ignored my concerns and went in - This cost me about 70% on the initial purchase when the reimbursement announcement hit. The second mistake was ignoring the clear signal when Scrushy dumped stock [I beleive your comment at the time was something like - 'I spit on him'] within a month of the announcement, then steadfastly denied he had any idea that there would be any change in reimbursement...This was Scrushy's way of announcing to the world that he was a first-class, card-carrying WEASAL. Did I, at that time, trust him and his managment team? Hell no! But I rationalized and stayed with the stock which will probably cost another 80% from where it closed recently.
I realize it's difficult to get a bargain without some negatives, but one of the negatives I'm going to be a lot less tolerant of is a management I don't trust, whose interests [ownership] aren't aligned with mine, who acts in ways detrimental to shareholders. In short, my weasal detector is set to 'sensitive' and if I see signs of weasal behavior, I'm gonna bail a lot quicker. No small factor in this shift, is decreased confidence in auditors - I'm coming to see the auditing process as no protection whatsoever from a management willing to cook the books. So it gets back to management integrity...and any clue that that's lacking...I'm moving on. |
