One quick aside. Last year, the more bearish you were on Under Armour, the better a team scored. But guess what? Under Armor rose 15% in the last 7+ months — the team that finished last had the result that was the best, and the winner did the worst. I know many of my readers don’t like Jim Cramer, but one thing that he said shines through here: “The bear case always sounds more intelligent.” The same is true in the biases of judges for academic competitions.
That’s David Merkel. I remember a professor at university who said that an MBA gives you a thousand reasons to say “no” to something but no ways of saying “yes”. We systematically overestimate the intelligence of two kinds of people: the articulate and the negative.
But trashing an idea is the easy way out. Being a smart booster is the most difficult job on earth. And the most lucrative.
Not Unreasonable 