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Pastimes : Investment Chat Board Lawsuits -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Geoff Altman who wrote (8141)	4/18/2005 10:43:05 PM
From: yardslave	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12465

Real long sigh... paid touts out there then why is it such a far fetched idea that there'd be paid bashers also. There is a number of reasons why that I don't believe in paid bashers. 1 – Why?- Not why someone would pay for a basher to force a stock down so they can short sell it. Not that at all. Just look around. You don't need to pay anyone to bash OTC stocks. There are always plenty of people who do it for free. Most OTC stocks are crap anyway so you really don't have to look very hard to find people who will say negative things about them. 2 - Have you ever got a spam bashing a stock? I have not. I get plenty of them touting stock. Now, these spammers do no work for free. In essence, with out even posting on a board there is clear and provable evidence of paid touters. 3 - Furthermore, you have to buy into the theory that there is some sort of organized effort to short stocks and bring them down. I just can not buy off on that theory. Is there illegal stuff going on, almost certainly, is it some kind of mm/nakid short/evil Canadian Elk, I doubt it. With out the organization, there is no infrastructure that could support paid bashing. Paid touting on the other hand happens all the time. The old P&D scheme happens continuously. This is because there are greedy people who think that they can make a fortune on penny stocks. The fact is that very very few people make money on penny stocks, but you can’t tell them that. There are plenty of suckers out there getting burned by P&D penny stock schemes every day. 4 - I know many bashers. Some of them that have posted here on SI have been to my house. Some of these people have uncovered incredible scams. They do it by doing a lot of homework and research. Not a single person that I know (and remember I said they do a ton of research) has ever found a paid basher. Not a single one. 5. I have (and others also) offered to bash stocks for money/compensation of any sort. I have never once received anything. Although I don't (and haven't) posted on SI much, I have been posting on RB since 1999 and on YAHOO before that. I have almost 14000 post on RB. Know one has ever made the offer to bash for pay, not one response. I know others who have done the same. 6. Not all, but a good majority of people who believe in paid bashers and other naked shorting conspiracy nonsense, tend to be like Ruffy in that they get very emotional and take things personally when someone disagrees with them. Ruffy then makes the mistake of making blanket statements like (and I am paraphrasing) "all people who don’t' believe in paid bashers are morons". When he they get challenged, they tend to go way over the top and gets ignored and banned from boards. Remember, buying stock and investing should never be emotional. It is alright to be emotional at the track or in Vegas, but not with your investments. I could go on about this, but I had better not. I have heard that if I (we) don't stay on topic on this board, we run the risk of being banned. I heard the moderator of this board is an inpatient non-tolerating mean old ogre who is just looking for reasons to ban people:). nuff said on this subject. Bill

To: Geoff Altman who wrote (8141)	4/19/2005 8:57:42 AM
From: Jeffrey S. Mitchell	Respond to of 12465

I don't mean someone who's paid by the fricken post, they're compensated the same way the touts are. "Paid touts" are, by definition, independent contractors (It used to be, before the SEC made it illegal, that companies would call these people "consultants" and issue them S-8 shares. Now, the SEC requires paid touts to put compensation disclaimers at the end of anything they produce-- including posts on message boards. You'll also note that all compensation is from third-parties so that companies can claim hands-off). I've yet to see any research report where someone disclosed that they were compensated as independent contractors to bash a company (i.e. the person being compensated issued a report that was intended to be severely critical). Do individuals and companies who short stocks for a living write negative messages about said companies on message boards? Of course. They also put out negative advisory reports. Asensio & Co. is one obvious example. But do companies like Asensio hire (professional) independent contractors (as opposed to, for example, ask employees) to bash on message boards or write their reports? I've never heard of such a thing and I've known a ton of people over the years who one would commonly call "bashers." So what the argument changes to is whether people who bash are compensated by profitable short sales (just like people unaffiliated with companies, but unpaid, spam their moonshot stock picks). That's a much different question simply because one can make an argument that anyone who posts about their trades on message boards is hoping they could somehow positively influence the outcome of their trade. The question "why is it such a far fetched idea that there'd be paid bashers also" is so overly broad that it's impossible to debate and statistically irrelevant. For example, on the former point, it's not far-fetched there's life somewhere else in the universe, but how does that help get us closer to reaching a meaningful conclusion? As for the latter point, it's also not far-fetched that even though the odds of winning Powerball are 1 in 120,526,770 that someone will do so in the near future... but does that mean we should factor that possibility into our retirement plans? Lastly, I hope you resist the temptation to retort that just because I've written I've never heard of any such cases that I'm claiming unequivocally there are none or that it never happens. I'm saying that such occurrences are statistically insignificant in the industry, especially compared to the number of people who accuse others of being paid bashers. So consider this message as coming from someone with an open mind who is asking for some actual documented evidence. - Jeff