I absolutely agree, and it is the reason I don't listen to cheer...

I absolutely agree, and it is the reason I don't listen to cheer squads. I also try very hard not to promote stocks because perse , as I don't want to influence people. The thing you need to be really careful of is people promoting stocks , quite legitimately too, with one eye closed.

A classic example was before the GFC. Many people were promoting stocks , saying things like:

"Wow stock XYZ has grown it's earnings 40% year on year for the last 5 years. ", without looking behind the scenes and the risk factors that were building.

Quite often I don't think it's just self promotion, I think people can post valid reasons but are way over exuberant . HML is a classic case in point. HML may well become the best investment of a life time, but we wont know that for some time yet.

When emotion takes over in investing it is quite easy to get blind sided by how much money you think you might make and not look deep enough.