On coming home from the hospital I wanted a comfort food that would easily be swallowed, I choose Lipton's chicken noodle soup. No matter how I try to scoop out the noodles I find that they're illusive, the first three bowls always fall short, while the fourth is almost like eating ramen.
I mention this because I think we all do things we're comfortable with, and shy away from what we're not. Lipton's is far from a gourmet soup, but something I do when not feeling well. Perhaps some of the same sort of thing applies to when discussing stocks, and other things, like politics. We look at things with preconceived biases. We like management, or we hate management, it doesn't matter, that's the perspective we choose.
In freshmen college English we were all asked to provide a short paper on something two sided where we had a strong feeling as to which side was right. You may have guessed that our term paper became a paper taking the opposite view. In my case I thought the B-70 costs did not justify it's deployment in substantial numbers. By the time I finished my term paper I'd become a fan of the B-70 and was sorry it wouldn't be deployed. What I had previously not considered were things like the ability to launch satellites from the B-70 without requiring the huge first stage rocket. That was over 50 years ago, and only now have we managed to return that Phase 1 booster, rather than wasting it.
My point is that we all at times need to try taking the other side of our argument and see if it doesn't change the way we're thinking. I view it as playing the Devil's Advocate, and it's something I try to do.
Gary
