With "Gut Feelings," I Fight (Set) Wildfires, Too
Fireman, I connect directly to your "gut feelings" factors.
Here in Ohio I'm an Ohio Certified Prescribed Fire Manager, and plan and conduct many hundreds of acres of native tallgrass prairie and oak savanna prescribed fires each spring, to control brush invasion (with never an escape or adverse event).
You are so right. With the control of either prescribed fires or wildfires, nothing beats experience and a close discernment and perception of everything happening with the fire. Gut feeling, as it were.
Actually, superbly intelligent perception, diligence, and response are the factors of success. "Gut feeling" is just shorthand for all of that. Only a portion of that can be learned in books and training sessions. Experience, hard work, and comprehension in the field are the real factors of safety and success.
So it is, I believe, in investing in a start-up pharmaceutical like Anavex. When I first read of the detailed scientific reports (from lab work on animals) telling the unique mechanisms of action of the Anavex sigma-1 receptor agonists in neurons, my undergraduate biological training (cytology, molecular biology, etc.) caused me to have a pretty strong "gut feeling" that, hey, this could be IT. Everything seemed to fall into place, and for the first time (not before, with the protein waste-clearing or acetylcholinesterase inhibitor Alzheimer's drugs) this new Anavex biology looked like it would work against Alzheimer's.
At the start, for me, only a "gut feeling." Now, several years later, after reading several dozen scientific papers on the Anavex molecules, my confidence in them is way beyond a mere gut feeling. The science is real, as the up-coming Phase 3 clinical trial will eventually substantiate. The shorter Rett and Parkinson's trials may prove the biology sooner.
And, as you know, much of the share price ascent of Chesapeake Energy derived from that company's extraction of large flows of natural gas and petroleum from the Utica and Marcellus shales fractured here in Ohio.
Wish I would have been able to get in when you did. My minor was geology, and knew of the embedded hydrocarbons in the Devonian Shales under Ohio and Pennsylvania. Just didn't have any free investment dollars at the time. Congratulations on that investment.
When you ship out to the West or to Canada, stay safe and in touch with your crew(s). The termination of the drought, with massive winter snow packs and spring rains, as you know, have caused explosive growth of vegetation, creating gigantic fuel loads. My best wishes. Stay safe.
