@NewbieHK Yeah, that's an interesting reflection. The way I think about things is at several levels.

First, a lot of the noise we read on forums involves a large number of retail investors, which for the most part don't have a lot of $ behind their views (although in small caps that's often not true given daily liquidity). Most of it can be ignored - but there are useful nuggets from time to time.

Then, there are a large bunch of advisers and brokers who influence retail $ flows, who sometimes also don't know much about what they are talking and writing about. (We get to hear some of this on Ausbiz on a daily basis!)

This is (in my view) then amplified by the technical traders, who amplify price action in the absence of fundamental information. The longer I spend in this game, the more I come to realise that some serious volumes are influenced by this - over weeks, and months. For example, I get a weekly newsletter called "The Bull" where most of the recommendations appear to be purely momentum-based. (I am not downplaying the importance of technical analysis, other than to say that as a long term investor, its only impact on me is that it can influence and inform the timing of decisions which are based on fundamentals. I have an open mind on this. But actually, it bears no relationship to the value of a business you are considering investing in for 5-10 years.)

The problem is that, as retail investors, this is the "noise" we are exposed to. But it is not the real market and it is important to understand this.

Beyond this "voting", much of the "weight" of the market derives from more serious, and well-informed retail investors, and institutional investors. Their weight is felt beyond today's traded volume or price action. We don't always "see" or "hear" them, because they are less noisey. But they move serious $ over time.

This is why I think smaller caps like $BOT are interesting. They are still too small to be on the radar screen of much of the serious money, yet there is a lot of noise around it, so the market is far from efficient. As an almost "no revenue", pre-approval company, many are treating $BOT like a typical pre-revenue biotech. However, anyone who is reasonably well-informed knows the risk profile is very, very different to what you normally see, as you've highlighted. That's the market inefficiency.

But of course, even at 90% (my number), there is still the 10%. So we'll soon see how well this post ages.

Right or wrong, that's my mental model of smaller cap investing in "hot stocks".

@mikebrisy it sure is interesting with all the different players.

I don’t really know how much every one of those component influences the day to day price, however, I am not naive to realise there is a lot that takes place outside the control of the average retailers investors.

I think your 3rd last paragraph is the key to BOT and many other shares (investment opportunities) that pop up on SM.

The more and more I read, listen and review the more I see how much the so called experts miss. Information that people like yourself and the other top contributors bring to the party on SM.

Yes, tomorrow is another day but, I will take 90% to 10% odds any day.

I have found one of my biggest strengths as an investor is taking the emotion out of winning or losing money on stocks which obviously hasn't happened overnight but over many years of investing. I back myself and where I do my research is mostly concentrated, strawman obviously one of my starting points. However I haven't invested in biotechs a lot as for the most part I just don't understand the science behind them plus they can be so volatile I can't seem to get a read on entry prices.

This has lead me to doing a lot of reading on Botanix outside of my normal resources and this has lead me to be unusually nervous in my investment in this one. I've been second guessing myself quite a bit and given Botanix has risen to 8% of my portfolio I had been considering taking a bit off the top of my investment. Likely complicating things for myself is selling out of Droneshield around $0.80 thinking things were getting out of control price wise then watching it continue to shoot to the moon.

Anyway, I'm not offering anything insightful to the discussion here. I'm more wondering out loud around my personal situation. It's been a long while since I've felt this way with an investment.