It’s rather funny to watch cause people get so emotional. People hate being wrong and want to be better than everyone else.

When will they figure out we’re all on the same team and should be rooting together in this journey?

We try to spend as little time on public social media as possible. There's value to be extracted no doubt, but it quickly becomes a net negative the longer you spend in it.

Our hypothesis for a lot of what you see is down to ego and projection.

A lot of arguments about stocks are pointless because people are talking cross purposes. They'll have different timeframes, investment styles and risk tolerance. The arguments become unpleasant because a lot of people haven't learnt to stay focused and debate civilly, so it just descends into ad hominem.

The "mercurial business leader" phenomenon you see is most likely projection. The successful leader that encompasses the same opinions and world view as yourself makes you not only financially invested, you're personally invested. Your ego is now tied to the continued success of that leader. If you've already made a lot of money in the stock, you're also subject to the endowment effect.

The endowment effect (which is really ego when you strip away the behavioural finance wrapping) is usually the cause of why people defend their stock to the bitter end, despite evidence to the contrary. That stock has been very kind to you in the past, but that all counts for nought if it faces a grim feature. It's always worth looking to see if someone is presenting a reasonable argument why your stock is now facing secular decline. Add it to your deliberations if it's reasonable. Even thank the other person for making you aware of it. If you think there's no merit to their argument, just move on. Your job is not to turn them into a believer. Your job is to be profitable.

We believe the vigorous "defend my stock to the bitter end" is just the ego talking. Ego is probably also responsible for the "your stock sucks" assertion. You're so tied to your beliefs and predictions that you can't imagine an alternative outcome. It's all pointless because the future is unknowable and randomness lurks. You can invest on the evidence-based data and trend, but nothing is ever guaranteed. If people held themselves to account for their assertions with more diligence and rigour (use journalling people!), there'll likely debate with more humility. In the world of investing, even the best process comes up with a lot of stinkers. Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, Terry Smith, Seth Klarman ... they've all bought their fair share of stinkers. They're skilled to quickly back out of their stinkers without regret when they realise they're wrong. We win because of the few big winners in our portfolio that we get right.

We don't like to say it's inexperience in the market that causes people to rigidly hold their opinions to the point of obsession. It's more about not experiencing enough variety of market conditions. You can spend 10 years in the market and really only have 1 year of experience repeated 10 times if the market has behaved the same over those 10 years (like during a long secular bull market). Likewise you can spend 5 years in the market and gain 10 years of experience if you go through a couple of bull and bear markets during that time. Those who entered the market just before the pandemic bear market are actually fortunate to have already experienced a couple of market cycles in quick succession. Tenure across market cycles usually brings humility. The more market cycles you live through, the more smackdowns you'll experience, the more humble you become.