In a recent interview with CNBC, Whitney Tilson talked about why his firm likes to invest in firms that are the subject of “panicked headline investing”. Tilson says that “we love buying stocks when we think the sellers don’t care about price,” and cites BP as an example, saying that the oil giant had such negative publicity after its Gulf of Mexico spill that investors lost sight of value and sold the stock indiscriminately. He’s made a handsome profit on the stock since then, and says he finds similar panic-triggered opportunities quite often. But he says the key is to separate the firms that have the ability to right the ship from those that are rightly being pummeled.