VIP Investors Forum

[dukeb]

That is a horrible analogy.

Let's say you were on a message board where cars are discussed. You're thinking of buying a Mercedes Benz so you go into the MB forum and mention that you are considering the purchase of a C300 sedan.

There may be people who will say they own a C300 and they think it's a great car and encourage you to buy one yourself. There may be people who say they owned a C300 and they hated it and discourage you from buying "that POS."

A "discussion" would have the original poster asking the "hate it" guy what he hated about it. The hater might state valid reasons (my engine blew up after 50,000 miles) or his opinion might be as a result of something petty or unreasonable (my dog chewed up the leather seat and the dealer refused to repair it under the warranty).

The same discussion might also involve a mechanic who has never owned a C300, but he's worked on them. If he says "changing the oil in the C300 is a giant pain" that might be meaningful to you if you change your own oil. If you don't do that kind of maintenance yourself, then the difficulty of changing the oil would not matter to you and you can discount that opinion.

Restricting the discussion about the C300 to people who own a C300 and love it is of very little value to someone who is considering buying a C300.

The same is true about discussing stocks on iHub. Do you want to only hear from people who own the stock and love it or do you value input from people who don't like the stock (whether they own it or not)?

People can ignore posters that don't share their opinion...about a car or about a stock.

I would want to hear both sides. Anyone who only wants to hear the positive is not a smart investor.

RE Perfect:
" It would be like joining a cooking forum to learn how to become a better chef, but every time you try to get excited about cooking, a large group of people who hate cooking appear, and attack you relentlessly for trying to cook. Not one single aspiring chef would hang out in that cooking forum for very long, and sure as hell would stop paying for that forum if they did, and quickly find someplace else they can go."