Yeah, but you're not talking about being vengeful or spiteful and writing a short article because someone on some message board annoyed you with their long stance. And you have had some mighty long daggers thrown your way, and you've never mentioned any such temptation.
I think you realize that there's more than money related to this stock. Even him posting that in jest disturbed me. Of course, he'll tell me my concern is 100% related to me, my shares and those I recommended the stock to. He would be wrong.
Negative or positive articles affect the company in many ways. But mostly it depends on what the articles are written about. To date, his have been focused on the company's technology, the trial design and what the science may or may not be revealing. Obviously going forward if he were to write anything great about the science it could positively affect the stock price. It may also help to provide comfort to patients who read articles related to the company whose trial they enrolled into. Truly, these long articles mostly help shareholders. But, by default give patients some hope, and could end up helping the company with enrollment if they still have some to do.
But he if were to write something damning about the science -- to which he truly is blind to all the facts --it could affect the overall trial in his attempt to share his negative views. And yes, it could assist the shorts in keeping the company's stock price deflated even if for a short time. Obviously as such, damage the company's ability to raise capital to fund the trial thus slowing down the clinical trial process. One can not fund studies if one has no money to which to fund. It could affect the patients' interest to either enroll or stay enrolled in the study. To me at this point, the 'stay enrolled' that's the biggest concern -- though it will become less of a concern on DCVax-L as the months continue to pass.
I'm certain most patients do ongoing research on what's written and said about the study they're in. We've already seen the damage AF can do with his "0" response hit pieces, and those were hardly scientific in nature. It had patients and their family members coming to the company defense, and screaming foul. Myself included. I even wrote doctors within the clinical system hoping they would come out with vocal support. So just imagine if a short piece was written in scientific nature, which his would be, I believe that it could hurt the clinical trial system and to me that would be hard to read and stomach.
And why would he consider writing a short piece in the first place? Maybe he feels it's his role to correct some moral injustice of how he sees the company first PRed on Direct. And this only came up because he's now beginning to question that Direct will ever be strong enough to cumulatively shrink metastasized tumors by 30% -- with three injection mind you, not the one that they only tested with so far -- and that in his mind it was irresponsible for the company to give the world the impression that it could. Or maybe it's about some reactive annoyance with posters who he feels lost the ability to be objective and he wants to argue that they should be. If it's the former, I don't think any one of us can truly say what the company believed at the time of the first press releases. If it's the latter, it honestly shouldn't matter because he's not investing with their money. I would hope he let it go and respectful just agree to disagree. If they can't see his argument to remain neutral on any elements of the technology, he's free to post all he wants about his views. Posting thoughts don't hurt as much as a negative Direct article would, that's for sure. But who cares what I think though, as he'll probably say I'm paranoid, not objective and only care about my money, and again, he'd be wrong.
The fact that I remain on this message board has nothing to do with money. I'm here because I feel the technology is often attacked. It isn't paranoid for me to be worried that the struggle between the shorts and the longs could hurt their clinical trials. I know the company is not perfect and their DCVax technology may encounter immune suppression in some patients. Yet, I believe it is improving upon the standard of care. By just how much, I can't say. I see that in waiting for the trials to end, it means the company may need to keep us blind to things so they can get to the end of their studies. It's fine by me if they play dirty in the short-opportunistic pig pen that they themselves never asked to be in. Their endpoints are not close; their stock price is not high. It's fine by me that they, while on route through the mud, mostly share and highlight the good, perhaps even inflate it and string us along at times while slowly alert us to the sometimes bad news (e.g., info arm showed it doesn't work miracles on all). It's fine by me, not because I'm trying to make money on the stock price but because I want them to be able to complete their studies, to get in front of the regulatory bodies, and then have their fate be decided. It's fine by me because that's the reality of our financial market. It's fine by me because I truly believe they have no choice. I do not want them to ever be in a situation where IMUC is in, who will have a hard time raising capital, and will likely end in a bankruptcy buyout. And, so I prefer never to read any negative bashing on the technology. He can call Direct suspect and post as much as he wants, but he shouldn't attempt to hurt our clinical trial system in any way because of it.
My $.02
