Identifying Message Board Bashers: Bashers Never Quit: Online stock message boards can seem like a fountain of conflicting information. On the one hand you've got a core of what you believe are real people; investors who care about the success or failure of a company. Then you've got these extreme voices on either end of the spectrum; the voices of bashers can make a cautious investor take pause; even when all signals point to good and as the particular stock you're looking at is trending upwards. Bashers will never quit and eventually they'll be right. Stocks go up and stocks go down. Of course if a basher says a stocks going down from a dime and the stock proceeds to go on a tear and ends up at thirty six bucks; the fact that it then goes from$36 to $34 is them missing the whole rest of the run up to that lofty amount. However if a stock goes from a penny to a dime and back to a penny (as many penny stocks do, quite a lot) then even if the basher was on the wrong side of that trade for a time period, the basher can ultimately claim they were right in the end.

Identifying Message Board Bashers: Bashers Dwell: One of the things about online stock message boards is that there are usually a few different points of view on the boards. Even if some generally agree on direction, that trap is always doubly tricky because of the time horizon. But one sure fire way to identify a basher is bashers will try and suck you into dizzying circular discussions. Semantics, matters of degree, nuance; these are all very important to the stock message board basher. The longer they've got you lulled into this Seinfeldian conversation about nothing, the more likely the frustrated lay-person is to give up. If no major facts about your investment decisions have changed and you still believe in the underlying strength of your company, don't listen to some bashers argument.

Identifying Message Board Bashers: Bashers are Martians: In my readings of bashers, I've decided they are not of this earth. They talk like they're just machines and they seem to have no real interest in the business of investing at all. They just seem to want to be right. This is one of the reasons I never contribute to the online stock message boards even though I read them all the time. I don't talk to Martians and I don't talk to bashers. Period.