I've recognized myself in Nassim Taleb's superb Fooled by Randomness. Taleb has disdain for reporters, whose job it is to fit facts, post-hoc, into a coherent story. And he's right.
I cover a company called Brush Engineered Materials, BW. Take a look at that chart, especially the last day.
Several weeks ago, I had gotten a call from a reporter at the Cleveland Plain Dealer who was working on a story about the company. Thursday was the Company's earnings call, and while they met their own guidance, many analysts (although not I) had expected them to beat them. The stock dropped 10 points. The story was scheduled to run Friday, and I got a post-close from the reporter, his editor explaining that they couldn't run something about the company and ignore a 17% drop in the price.
I said,
"Investors just got a little over-enthusiastic," said Joshua Sharf, a stock analyst with Wm. Smith & Co. in Denver. Thursday's stock close "is where Brush was a couple of weeks ago, probably about where it should be. People are disappointed," he joked, "that earnings didn't exceed their expectations."
In retrospect, this is exactly the kind of post-hoc explanation that does nobody any good. In the morning meetings, I never speculate on where a stock's going thast day, week, or month. I have a price target. If I like the stock, I like the stock. If I don't, I don't. But I - along with Taleb - have exacty no idea where the market or an individual stock is going that day, and it's silly to try to explain it after the fact.
In the future, when asked by a reporter why a stock is dropping, I'll probably say something like, "Who the hell knows? More sellers than buyers, I guess."
