re: Cassel here is his last post explaining his thoughts, via google cache. at first I thought this had been done to him. I am actually more shocked to see he had been thinking about it already, and a bit underwhelmed that he does not explain why now, and the 'negative distraction' he is alluding to and for which company? His site was a great resource, this is imo a poor way to shut it down. Notice of a few hours? So much for transparency. Maybe it will be back someday.
"Site Shutdown
I will be shutting down my website in the next few hours. I know this may come as a shock. It’s a decision I’ve been thinking about for some time. My goals from the beginning were to educate by example and do it for free. I think that was a success, but the negative side of being completely transparent and public is that you have a target on your back. I could honestly care less about the personal attacks since most of my naysayers are mostly odd-lotting gurus that can’t cut it making a living by capital gains only, or need to manipulate a stock via the short term to make a living. I told myself from the beginning that once my website became too big of a distraction for the companies I’m invested in (a negative distraction) I would shut it down, and I think that point has been reached. In the next few hours I will shut down my website, stop tweeting, pretty much everything. Nothing will change in regards to my investing or strategy, I am just plucking out the public part. I will be a ghost so to speak. I hope most of you will be understanding of this, and I wish everyone the best as I’ve enjoyed conversing with you on my website more then you could ever imagine. I may run into some of you at a few micro-cap conferences in the future.
I’d like to leave you with this. When investing in micro cap stocks it’s all about betting on the jockey, even more so then the product or service they sell. Find undervalued stocks that have a chance of getting overvalued. Find stocks in industries or market segments that are becoming hot (not already hot) as these stocks will get overvalued. Find stocks with the right share structure. And lastly, give management a short leash. These are the investment philosophies that have served me well over the years and I think they will do the same for you.
Ian Cassel
"
