Primer: Dogma and Dishonesty (cherry-picking stats)

(One of periodic short explanatory posts to touch on key Stock Market Organizer topics and hashtags.)

I don’t care what people think or what analysis methods they use unless they may be influencing the decisions of others. So, I get a little heated when I see an egregious violation of intellectual honesty like the graphic below.

This is from Instagram. It pushes the "Long Term Buy and Hold" narrative while dishonestly withholding valuable context that might make a reader second guess what the graphic purports to "prove."

Here’s the missing context, misleading in its omission:

The misleading graphic above, which points to a 10-year 240% return despite annual potential reasons to sell, is a completely lame argument for Long Term Buy & Hold (LTBH).

I’m not arguing that people shouldn’t LTBH. Since it is essentially trend-following - a base concept with which I agree (though LTBH has a fatal flaw because it lacks always-critical risk management as described in this post) - and most people have neither the interest nor the time to closely follow the market in a meaningful and actionable manner, LTBH is something most people probably should do absent a more practical alternative. (However, the burden of proof is now on LTBH proponents for a long-term bull case now that we are in a potentially long-term rising interest rate environment after 40 years of declining rates, as noted in this post.)

There is no “perfect” methodology. There is only the methodology that works for any individual market participant.

But I have a major bee in my bonnet about those who mindlessly and without critically thinking - aka dogmatically - feed people who innocently may not know any better misleading statistics like the ones in the photo above without providing any context. That is deceitful and may be harmful.

I have no illusion that what I provide is attractive, useful, and informative to anyone but me. But I guarantee I will never knowingly mislead here.

Am I overreacting with my labeling? Perhaps. Perhaps the poster has the best intentions. I'll never know. But I see this type of, if not intentionally malicious then lazy, deception more often than I care to.

Here's my critique of another falsehood that regularly makes the rounds. It is patently ridiculous but like clockwork it gets repeated without critically thinking by people looking for social media material.

And, like the main subject of this post, it needs to stop.