I agree. JBenne has summed HC up well. Though, I'm not sure I agree all downrampers are doing so out of some kind of need for schadenfreude.
I think probably what happens is there are those who have made their decision to invest and have become psychologically/emotionally invested as well. Fallen in love, more or less, with their stock. Rampers.
And there are those who have fallen out of love (Downrampers) and want to warn everyone else. What you describe as delighting in others losing money, from what I have seen, is probably more a case of delighting in being right, or having some shred of evidence they might be right.
And scattered around here and there, there are probably the real thing. The ones who are trying to manipulate the stock price. Probably not very many.
"Most investors initially think that all they have to do is find the ‘right’ strategy, make an investment, follow their plan and everything will be fine. Doing this though is easier said than done. For example, you have made your investments and built your carefully planned portfolio but along comes the first major correction in the share market and you start losing money. How are you going to react and what will you feel? Most new investors (and even some more experienced ones!) will watch as the value of their investments falls and the emotion of not wanting to lose money means that they hold onto a position in the ‘hope’ that one day it will recover. Studies have shown that people suffer almost twice as much pain losing $1 as they would feel pleasure in gaining $1 (Kahneman and Tversky, 1991) and this is what motivates investors to hold onto losing positions rather than selling to preserve their capital so that they can invest another day. In this situation emotion is hijacking our decision making skills. Even though we know that we should ‘cut our losses early and let our profits run’, we hold onto a position with the view that until we actually sell the position we haven’t actually made the loss – or that is our rationale, even though it isn’t a logical one.
I'm a long term holder. I'm probably closest in sentiment to Indigo, but I don't have so much in this that it is burning me. Just annoying that I had made the classic mistake of not selling when I was up. And as per above, not selling because I don't want to realise the loss (admit I was wrong).
I'd love to think in the long run this will come good. But.....
VRC Price at posting:
2.6¢ Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)
