Blackwater sell down, page-27

Good assessment & response. Those quotes really do tell the story. Its like how some individuals set themselves up to fail in a multi step process :
1) seeking alpha from others
2) believing that they found the alpha themselves
3) winning from that alpha
4) confusing the win from that alpha as a sign they've got brains and a talent for finding alpha
5) failing
6) blaming someone else for their own shortcomings.

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In this situation I can already see in stage 1 & 2 the setup for stage 6. I've seen people do this on multiple occasions both in and out of finance. I'm not sure why they do it, it'd be way to simple to just say "stupidity", but, it's probably something closer to a lack of fundamental understandings, combined with an inability to reconcile one's own actions around these fundamentals. Examples:

1) buying hype in the first part of the Lassonde Curve while not understanding the raw geology, only to blame shorters or asic or the wind/rain when price crashes because the follow up drill results were povo.

2) buying renewables top of the market with pe at 100 and then blaming Donald Trump because of TDS.

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Annoying when their kind proliferate, but, there's always signal in the noise.