Investors hear a lot of different things, and they start to think that they know something. Reality is that they usually know little if anything without equity research, and even with equity research their knowledge is likely to be incomplete without industry expertise. So when stocks start moving against their thesis, they fret and struggle to figure out what they missed. This is not because investors aren’t smart or don’t work hard. There are a couple of issues at play here – one is of course short-term focus, which can complicate analysis. The other is lack of domain expertise.
