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Tomorrow will be a sea of blood.... 
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Good article everyone should read..i've always taken the contrarian approach.. don't follow the crowd cos its the minority that makes it in the stock market.. one good example would be cosco..i bet everyone is trying to dump cosco after the "scare"..but if ya take the contrarian approach.. u will think otherwise n see its true potential..
Published April 12, 2008  |
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Don't be afraid to be a contrarian
By TEH HOOI LING
CATHERINE Genovese had driven home to the Kew Gardens section of Queens, New York, early on March 13, 1964. Arriving home at about 3.15am and parking about 30 metres from her apartment, she was attacked by Winston Moseley.
Genovese tried to run but was caught by her assailant who stabbed her twice in the back. When Genovese screamed out, 'Oh my god, he stabbed me! Help me!', several neighbours heard and rushed outside. When one of them shouted at the attacker, 'Leave that girl alone!', Moseley ran off and Genovese slowly made her way towards her apartment. She was seriously injured. Some witnesses saw Moseley enter his car and drive away, only to return 10 minutes later. He found Genovese, who was lying, barely conscious, in a hallway at the back of the building she lived in. He then attacked her again, stabbing her several more times. While she lay dying, he sexually assaulted her. He stole about US$49 from her and left her dying in the hallway. The attacks lasted about half an hour. According to one report, during Moseley's last attack in the hallway, a neighbour just up the stairs opened his door and watched what was going on without doing anything to stop the attacker. A few minutes after the final attack, a witness called the police. Police and medical personnel arrived within minutes of the call. Genovese was taken away by ambulance and died on the way to hospital. The metropolitan editor of The Times, AM Rosenthal, happened to have lunch with the city police commissioner a week later. Rosenthal asked the commissioner about a different Queens-based homicide, and the commissioner, thinking he was being questioned about the Genovese case, told of the long and public attack on Genovese. None of those who saw the attack take place bothered to call the police, he was told. Rosenthal then assigned a reporter to investigate the 'bystander angle' of the incident. Within a week, The Times published a long, front-page article. The initial paragraphs of the report ran like this: 'For more than half an hour 38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens. 'Twice the sound of their voices and the sudden glow of their bedroom lights interrupted him and frightened him off. Each time he returned, sought her out and stabbed her again. Not one person telephoned the police during the assault. One witness called after the woman was dead. 'That was two weeks ago today. But Assistant Chief Inspector Frederick M Lussen, in charge of the borough's detectives and a veteran of 25 years of homicide investigations, is still shocked. 'He can give a matter-of-fact recitation of many murders. But the Kew Gardens slaying baffles him - not because it is a murder, but because 'good people' failed to call the police.' Rosenthal subsequently wrote a book on the subject and attributed the non-action of witnesses to apathy. 'Nobody can say why the 38 did not lift the phone while Miss Genovese was being attacked, since they cannot say themselves,' he wrote. 'It can be assumed, however, that their apathy was indeed one of the big-city variety. It is almost a matter of psychological survival, if one is surrounded and pressed by millions of people, to prevent them from constantly impinging on you, and the only way to do this is to ignore them as often as possible. Indifference to one's neighbour and his troubles is a conditioned reflex in life in New York as it is in other big cities.' Soon psychologists were attracted to the case. And Latane and Darley came up with the explanation that it was because there were 38 witnesses that no one had helped. Two reasons were offered as to why a bystander to an emergency will be less likely to help when there are a number of other bystanders. One, with several potential helpers around, the personal responsibility of each individual is reduced. 'Perhaps someone else will give a call or call for aid, perhaps someone else already has.' The second reason is as follows: Very often an emergency is not obviously an emergency. Is the person lying in an alley a heart-attack victim or a drunk sleeping one off? Is the commotion next door an assault requiring the police or an especially loud marital spat where intervention would be inappropriate and unwelcome? What is going on? In times of such uncertainty, people's natural tendency is to look at the actions of others for clues. We see how others around us are reacting and then decide whether the event is or is not an emergency. Uncertainty and inaction In his book Influence, Robert Cialdini says everybody else observing an event is likely to be looking for social evidence, too. 'Because we all prefer to appear poised and unflustered among others, we are likely to search for that evidence placidly, with brief, camouflaged glances at those around us. Therefore everyone is likely to see everyone else looking unruffled and failing to act. As a result, by the principle of social proof, the event will be roundly interpreted as a non-emergency.' This, according to Latane and Darley, is a state of pluralistic ignorance 'in which each person decides that since nobody is concerned, nothing is wrong. Meanwhile, the danger may be mounting to the point where a single individual, uninfluenced by the seeming calm of others, would react'. So in essence, the cause of inaction is the simple state of uncertainty. Meanwhile, experiments also found that we are likely to use the actions of others to decide proper behaviour for ourselves, especially when we view those others to be similar to ourselves. This tendency to take a cue to decide proper behaviour from those around us, and especially those similar to us, when we are uncertain of a situation, can be observed in the stock market as well. For example, in the late 1990s and early 2000, many were uncertain about how to value dotcom companies. This new breed of companies was said to be about to revolutionise how business was done, and their earnings were seen to have the capacity to grow at an exponential rate if they could be first in the market. In the confusion, some analysts began to value these companies based on the number of eyeballs the dotcoms could capture. And ridiculously, the higher a company's burn-rate for its cash, the higher it was valued. Companies were also valued based on their sales, since there were no profits to speak of. Soon, these metrics became acceptable ways to value a dotcom company, and more and more people in the market started using them. That is, 'until the euphoria mounted to the point where a single individual, uninfluenced by the seeming frenzy of others, would react by selling the dotcom stocks'. The same goes for an undervalued stock. Say, you spot a stock you think is very cheap. It is fundamentally sound but is in an out-of-favour sector. It is trading at only two times enterprise value over its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation. This was mentioned in passing in the press, and the price did rise, but then the market's interest in the stock slowly died down. In such a situation, the average investor would start asking why a stock is so cheap, yet nobody is buying it. He will try to explain it away by saying, 'others must know something that I don't', and in the process, may miss a two or three-bagger. The market will wake up to the stock's potential 'when a single individual, uninfluenced by the seeming ignorance of others, reacts by buying the stock'. Such action, if it is by a respected investor, will be the validation needed by others to come round to the realisation that the stock is cheap. As the almost legendary Teng Ngiek Lian of Target Asset Management puts it: 'A great investor is never scared to be a contrarian.' In the Genovese case, it was subsequently revealed that there were a number of factual errors in how it was reported. Significantly fewer than 38 people witnessed the attack. The correct number is said to be about a dozen. And none of the witnesses observed the attack in its entirety. Because of the layout of her apartment complex and the fact that the attacks took place in different locations, no witness saw the entire sequence. Most only heard portions of the incident without realising its seriousness, a few saw only a small part of the initial assault, and no witness directly saw the final attack and attempted rape in an exterior hallway which resulted in Genovese's death. The factual inaccuracies of the case notwithstanding, I believe the findings that humans have a tendency to take a cue from those around when they are uncertain about how to behave, ring true. That's why to be able to think independently is such a prized quality to have. Incidentally, in case of emergency, to reduce the ambiguity of the situation and ensure that passers-by stop to help, the person in need should clearly vocalise that he or she needs help. |
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The esoteric investment dogma yet valid. No frolicsome.
| paperless Senior |
Straits Times Index / STI to cross 3000 boosted by long-term investors / Posted: 07-Mar-2008 16:04 4Go to Message | ||||
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Yup. The trend is well defined couple months ago. Same commandments for the same strategy.
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but is juz ultimately sianz......... 
ozone2002 ( Date: 11-Apr-2008 11:38) Posted:
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hahah` i saw an article before that an American psychologist took notice and found out in a research that dark weathers like this morning...it affects traders...to be on the dark side...the cloudy skies or when with heavy downpours...it gives ppl the gloomy feeling...
more or less got some effect la...but we are the retailers...wonder if it will affect those BBs...imagine...heavy thunderstorm means heavy selldown...haiz* if only the market is so predictable
Centaur ( Date: 11-Apr-2008 10:31) Posted:
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