Monday Morning Rules of The Board

Monday Morning Rules of The Board

An Explanation of this Post: In the first six months of 2018 our board had exploded with new posters whose well intentioned excitement had led to a lot of superfluous off-topic posts, with many of them way off-topic because new posters were unaware of the Rules of the Board, and some were off-topic because we older board members were careless and posted some very off-topic posts ourselves.

Loads of off-topic posts will eventually kill the board as serious board members will drift away rather than wade through them. The reason our board has become so popular is that it has been extremely useful to many of us. Let’s not destroy it with a lot of off-topic posts.

I will try to post this description of what the board is about each Monday morning. The hope is that new members will read it and profit from it, and that it will remind us older board members what is expected. It will only add four posts a month, and hopefully it will help reduce that huge number of off-topic posts by hundreds each month. I’m posting this to help us all cooperate to keep our great board great. Here goes:

This board is for the discussion and analyzing of individual growth stocks in a cooperative and courteous manner and, secondarily, the philosophy around investing in them.

That means that there are subjects that are Off-Topic for this board. There’s nothing wrong with them as topics. There are other boards where they are welcome, or even the chief topic of conversation. These include politics which, however, quickly spins out of control and ends up with people who had been amiably working together discussing a stock, suddenly viciously arguing. Political posts will be immediately deleted.

Investing subjects that are off topic include technical analysis, or option trading subjects, including describing the details of your option positions, or value investing, or turn-around investing, or dividend or income investing, or market-timing, or what Investors Business Daily says the market is going to do next week, etc. Repeated posts of what long lists of stocks have done in the past week don’t belong. Basic investing questions like “What does EV/S ratio mean?” should simply be googled, rather than filling up the board. Portfolio management is not a subject for this board, and questions like that should be answered off-board if at all.

We have wandered off into discussing certain very promising small biotechs such as Kite, Juno, Nektar, Arena, and Amarin. They didn’t qualify as growth stocks, but since, thanks to bulwinkl and others, we’ve had very good results with most of them, we’ll grandfather them in.

As far as month-end summaries, most people on the board find them very useful when the poster doesn’t just post a list of names of stocks, but explains why he holds each of them.

Responding to someone with anger because they disagree with you about a stock is simply not done on our board.

Non-investing subjects like how to cultivate apple orchards, or private humorous conversations, can be fun but don’t belong here after one or two posts. That’s just a few, but you get the idea.

This all may sound intimidating, but think of it this way, if you were on a board set up to discuss French cooking you wouldn’t post about how to make Mexican tacos or Chinese spring rolls, and certainly not about politics, or option trading, either. You’d post about French cooking. Well, our board is about analyzing and discussing individual growth stocks. It’s as simple as that.

Remember that you can take conversations off-board. It’s easy! Just check the little box on the reply window that says, “Email this Reply to the Author” and un-check the box that says, “Post this Reply to the Boards.”

I’m not sure what to tell you about appreciations. People who make an especially good post certainly deserve rec’s, but post after post that just say “Great post!” just fill up the board. I guess if you have something special to say about the post or poster, go ahead: “Thanks Joe, your grasp of this field is amazing and I always learn so much from your posts on these stocks, because you clarify issues about xxx that I can’t figure out myself.” That’s different because you are saying something. I know that I do sometimes break this rule, but I feel that, as host of the board, I should try to recognize and thank people who make especially helpful and valuable posts. I’m sure I miss some.

Ask yourself if your post is adding anything of value to the discussion.

One-line posts rarely add anything significant to a stock discussion but fill up the board.

Finally, if you are new to the board I strongly urge you to read the Knowledgebase, which is linked to in the right panel on every board post, and also below my signature below. It is divided into three parts and it is crammed full of information about the philosophy of the board and about investing. Many say they have read it two or three times.

Let’s all try to keep our board focused on analyzing and discussing growth stocks, and useful to us. We have created something great here and let’s not kill it with a lot of extraneous stuff.

Best

Saul

For Knowledgebase for this board,nplease go to Posts #17774, 17775 and 17776. We had to post it in three parts at the time.

A link to the Knowledgebase is also at the top of the Announcements column that is on the right side of every page on this board.

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