I would say that people take it personally because they trace the causal links of their losing money directly to these quote fud unquote articles. Plus the us vs them mentality, which probably isn't that widespread on shareholder boards.
The fact that so many of the HT folk "take it personally because they trade the causal links of them losing money" to CF and CT reports is what is bizzare IMHO.
Consider an analogous situation .. suppose a blog like TechCrunch started publishing repeatedly bad stories about the new iPhone... detailing bugs, missteps, broken promises, etc. and that Apple's stock took a dive after the phone was released amidst all the bad PR.
Even if negative articles were wide read and quoted, I could not imagine an irate shareholder (even a total Apple fanboy) threatening to kill the author of the article. In fact, since that kind of negative PR happens all the time, usually the response of an a shareholder who thinks that a company is being unfairly targeted by bad PR would be to view the dip in price as a huge buying opportunity... since eventually Apple would prove the naysayers wrong (in the fanboy's mind).
So again, why the rabid dog attacks on a news blog? If the poster really thought it unfair and untrue, they would be thanking CF and buying more XPY, waiting for Josh to prove everyone here wrong.
The vitriol directed by those folks on HT against the discussion here is strange to me. If its not a cult, I just don't understand what motivates such behaviors.
Fun experiment for you to try; go to one of those forums for "get rich quick with stock signals and technical trading" bullshit, and quote the studies showing that technical trading doesn't cover fees on average. Then come back here and let us know who was more vicious.
I have done this in meetings with so-called analysits. Yes they are unperturbed, arrogant, poorly educated and angry at the questions .. I probably don't have many friends left who read Investors Business Daily lol ..but still no one has threatened violence for my insolence to date.
I would seriously not be surprised if it turns out that Josh himself made the threat. I can picture him sitting in front of his computer seething, riddled with anxiety and the full force of his failures weighing down on him as he types away madly trying to stop the unstoppable. At some point though he is going to have to face reality. I said this before and I'll say it again, If he attends the Miami conference and he is not a complete sociopath and has some kind of remorse ingrained in him from his religious studies, we may very well see him have a breakdown. Then again he could do that and shed crocodile tears in hopes of gaining sympathy from his cult. They'd probably forgive him too.