Simple men who have important things to worry about, such as their 9 to 5 job, their children, and whether or not they’ll have sex with their wife this year, trust financial investors with their money. These special breed of men, skilled at using Microsoft Excel and one of those $300 scientific calculators that can do 3D graphs, the same one simple men purchased their freshman year of university only to realize they’d never use it again after knocking up the future mother of their children at a Halloween party, are responsible for offering solid investment advice, and in some cases even managing a man’s life savings.
Not all financial advisors are groomed by fine educational institutions, and several are likely to have skipped a risk management course or two so they could lay awake at night staring at a poster of Paul Krugman, fantasizing what it would be like to bang a hot Swedish chick at some shady discoteche in Stockholm the night before they give an acceptance speech for their Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Ashok Kumar, an analyst with Northeast Securities, is one of these people. He claims to have talked with “Google’s design partners” about an upcoming Android device that would be made by none other than Google themselves.
The stupidity of that statement knows no bounds when it comes to upsetting competent bloggers, journalists, and other analysts. Google would never, ever, make an Android device. That would hurt their relationships with current vendors, it requires a completely different skill set than what any Google employee currently has, and most importantly it would tarnish the image of Android since all other devices would be compared to Google’s hypothetical ultimate smartphone.
Most people would read what Kumar wrote and wonder if he was that guy who stared in that movie about two stoners on an epic mission to find White Castle, but Scott Moritz is not one of those people. Scott wrote an article in The Street quoting Kumar and stating his assumption as an exclusive nugget of information. As a fellow online editor, I understand the logic. Write something crazy. Get a lot of people linking to you. Make a lot of money.
You know what, I’m an asshole because I fell for the bait. At the same time however, I’m not going to have trouble sleeping at night, because I know the next time I’m at an industry event, trying to expand my rolodex and gain useful knowledge from experts in their respective field, people are not going to point at my name tag and laugh as they call me the retarded Android guy.