You're overthinking it. If you're picking individual stocks,...

You're overthinking it. If you're picking individual stocks, you've got nobody to rely upon but yourself - especially anyone that you're not paying to be your fiduciary. If you do have little clue about the industry, how are you to understand who the "experts" of the industry are and whether they have any competence.

I know you weren't questioning it, but just to show that I'm not playing Monday morning quarterback, I made the following comments on Nov 2018: https://hotcopper.com.au/threads/an...shareholders.4508347/page-32?post_id=36477761

It wasn't even about the signs in 2018. It was about the signs for the period from 2015 to 2018. One can draw their own conclusions about how much of the mess was contributed to by the current CEO.