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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold and Silver Juniors, Mid-tiers and Producers -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (14609)	6/27/2006 5:06:57 PM
From: E. Charters	Respond to of 78416

Only if the group is artificial, as in an experiment will you get results of consensus being better than individual thought, and only if judged non impartially. Better for whom? And how?. When the group has not got one goal, or is possibly going to be directly exposed imminently to the results of the thought processes implemented, the decision-making is not always most robust in favour of group or individual survival. It is like saying committees always come to better decisions than one person. Or armed groups make good field decisions that maximize the individual's chance of survival. This has not been demomstrated vis a vis each individual. Even if you take into account the self interest of the committee OR the greater good of the represented group, it would be hard indeed to demonstrate that groups make better decisions for other groups. The mechanism of this is not in evidence. This SI thread actually is of dubious benefit to any person making a decision about what stock or stocks to buy. They may not believe any one person, or any seeming clique. They may be confused by the many choices. There is no way of forcing a best choice group on the group. Clearly the group's needs are best served by people all fessing up which stocks are best and the group working thru who is more likely right over time... Many are reticent to do so. Others with hold because they don't want the prices going up too soon. Others don't know for sure or are prejudiced by some factors, not the least of which may be the broker they work for wants them to sell stock x. Others may want to sell stock x to the public at more favourable prices and want to promote it for that reason. If I want to sell my own stock or stock in a company I work for it is looked upon as cheap, self serving and rankly prejudiced, which it may be, except for the first two reasons may be a lot more constrained than people realize, and the latter reasons may be irrelevant. In fact if there is any principle that should be embraced is that the full worth of stock is only determined by one thing. The number of people who buy it for any reason. The stock does not have to have one iota of intrinsic value. And there is one thing that the "inviolate pundit" realizes. It is relatively easy to shake the faith of the average person in ANY stock. And if you shake the faith of only a dozen people you will create negative movement in just about any smallish stock short of a volcanic stock like Aurelian. And if you do it right, you can even tank a stock like ARU a tad. As a matter of fact its recent drop back was done probably by just that technique by a fairly clever brokerage house I would warrant. One that oversells often. And is fairly large. And likes to take profits early. hmmmmm wonder who that could be? Mass movements in the herd stock group are uncommon in the short term.. as in sudden sell offs. EC<:-}