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Brokers "ideas" included about ten common stocks, all well known mega caps such as Target and Walmart.
Is that what they are calling a wrap account? It sounds like he is cherry picking stocks instead of going with an index fund.
I have my wife's 401K in a blue chip index fund. It has good weeks and bad but is holding it's own.
It's around 1.0% for all the accounts they manage but it is based on the total balance and they don't charge for trades on those accounts if they are changing direction. They have a couple of analysts who review the accounts and I hear from them once a month.
I'm just not interested anymore in managing the accounts. The fee will get lower once we move my wife's pension and her 401K account to them.
I still manage my play money acct and my son's acct and that is enough for me.
Only very prosperous young people had $10,000 RadioShack TRS80 model II [computer] systems ~45 years ago and got the 10% shareholders discount. Think of the money I made as an early investor in RadioShack (Tandy Corp). Why do you have so much trouble recognizing that I'm exactly who I say I am.
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"About the same here, Duke. Later i added the original dot matrix printer. My cassette recorder for backing up rarely worked. The year would have been around 1977.
For several years, shareholders got a 10% discount on Radio Shack products, but it was never advertised nor was it widely known. The 10% discount was a big benefit when I bought my costly TRS80 Model 2 around 1979. It worked quite well with its 8" floppy discs, a huge improvement over the original TRS80. All told, I eventually had about $10,000 in it which we mostly used for handling our company mailing list of many thousands of customer names and addresses."
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=171804318
If it's any consolation, 1 of the wealthiest people on IHub is talking to you. You should be humbled, as I'm sure others were. What bigger honor could there be than talking to someone with lots of money.
...I'll add that I'm likely the wealthiest person to have ever exchanged ideas with you.
Janice, I apologize for saying that. Don't know where I got those ideas.
"What would that accomplish?" Well, with your ~293,000 posts here, I'd think you'd occasionally sum up penny stocks in just one tidy post, which is that essentially every OTC penny stock promoted on internet stock boards is a scam or at best, a risky investment to avoid. Maybe you've said that and I missed it, but that's what I'd tell anyone about penny stocks.
I'll add that was perhaps the first investment advice I gave my sons years ago: "Never Buy Penny Stocks." That was probably followed by the word "Never," several times.
I'd occasionally glance at the very active Tasty Fries board on Raging Bull long ago. But don't recall you having a connection to it. What I remember most were groups bickering at each other online, slinging vile names day after day. Tasty Fries was a Shark Tank-like cute product with no real company behind it, just some guy named Kelly.
Also recall posters saying they had seen a working prototype fry machine in a high traffic location. Others would go to the location and find no machine or learn that it had been moved elsewhere.
The stock finally blew up amid allegations of share counterfeiting.
I see IHUB has a fairly feeble TFRY board with one poster as late as 2009 reporting "The Chart Looks Fantastic." LOLOLOLOL!
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=40045830
She refuses to tell new investors that they should totally shun penny stocks or unlisted stocks, although she's leaned more in that direction in recent years.
What would that accomplish? Christ on a crutch! We're talking about people who believe George Soros is out to destroy them.
Why would you think I'm "deceptive"? Why would I be, since I don't have to be? I've done research for all of my adult life, and I'm good at it, regardless of the subject.
That was not a big deal. Not the only book I've written. If you knew how to do this kind of research, you could find others. And I've also written quite a few chapters in books. And a bunch of articles.
I'd had read that she was drawn to attacking stock scams because her mother lost a lot of money in them.
My God! I can't imagine where you'd have read that. Doesn't begin to be true. Nor does this:
What you almost never hear about Janice is that she had (or has) a daughter. I doubt Janice did well with motherhood and all the stuff that involves. I can't see her camping out with the Girl Scouts, for instance.
There only time I ever camped out with Girl Scouts was when I was a Girl Scout. Thee were mice in the outhouse. Come to think of it, it was the only time I ever camped out. Which was just as well.
So where did you dig up that bullshit? And is that why Bull's asked me twice in the last few days if I have children? Yep, I'll bet it is. I was wondering, and it wasn't difficult to satisfy my curiosity.
Why don't you rename this board "Let's Try to Dig Up Dirt on Janice!"?
Brokers "ideas" included about ten common stocks, all well known mega caps such as Target and Walmart. His first idea was Verizon with its 7% yield emphasized. That's about the last stock a young single kid in a high tax bracket should be putting money in. The broker doesn't mention that VZ shares have lagged the market for the past 20 years! But its showy dividend is bound to appeal to new unsophisticated investors. The 7% VZ yield makes the broker look like a genius to newbies.
Broker also included three high yielding bank stocks. For several reasons, an S&P 500 index fund like what he's owned almost since birth would have been MUCH SMARTER.
His "ideas" included about ten common stocks, all well known large caps such as Target and Walmart. His first idea was Verizon with its 7% yield emphasized. That's about the last stock a young single kid in a high tax bracket should be putting money in. The broker doesn't mention that VZ shares have lagged the market for years. VZ has dropped for the past 20 year! But its showy dividend is bound to appeal to new unsophisticated investors. The 7% VZ yield makes the broker look like a genius.
Broker also included three high yielding bank stocks. For several reasons, an S&P 500 index fund like what he's owned almost since birth would have been MUCH SMARTER.
Do you pay for Fidelity to manage your account? My son's main broker just emailed him some investing "ideas" and also mentioned eventually moving him into what they used to call, "a wrap account."
I'm very happy with their management of our accounts. I still haven't gotten around to meeting with them over the next steps regarding my wife's retirement.
Likely Fidelity has a lot of your money in an S&P 500 index fund. Just checked and was shocked how well plain-vanilla ETFs such as SPY and VOO have done so far in 2023... up 9.52%. Tech has done much better than that with QQQ recovering to the tune of 22.3%. But QQQ is still down about 20% from its all time peak in late 2022.
Small caps and microcaps have performed poorly YTD
I forgot about the surviving spouse benefits which probably explains a lot.
My wife is ready to retire. Surving benefits is something she doesn't need to worry about.
I leave it up to Fidelity for the most part and they have specific instructions.
For my play money I buy what I know.
Only one thing really irritates me about Janice: She refuses to tell new investors that they should totally shun penny stocks or unlisted stocks, although she's leaned more in that direction in recent years.
I have about 17 rules I follow in picking stocks. One of them is I never buy stocks with a market cap under about $10 billion. My kids know those rules and follow them too. Microcaps and small caps can do well in strong markets but they tend to blow to smithereens in bad times like 2001 and 2008.
I take a MUCH longer-term view of investing than most IHUBers.
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Professors can get tons of fringe benefits these day, including many that survive them and benefit surviving family/spouse. I think Janice isn't generally deceptive, at least by the lowly standards of penny stock boards.
Fed report on SVB collapse faults bank’s managers — and central bank regulators
PUBLISHED FRI, APR 28 202311:00 AM EDTUPDATED 2 MIN AGO
KEY POINTS
Mismanagement and supervisory failures, compounded by a dose of social media frenzy, combined to bring down Silicon Valley Bank, the Fed said in a report Friday.
Michael S. Barr, the Fed’s top bank supervisor, called for changes in the way regulators approach the nation’s complex and interwoven financial system.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell said he welcomed the Barr probe and its internal criticism of Fed actions during the crisis.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/28/fed-report-on-svb-collapse-faults-banks-managers-and-central-bank-regulators.html
Silicon Valley Bank’s dramatic failure in early March was the product of mismanagement and supervisory missteps, compounded by a dose of social media frenzy, the Federal Reserve concluded in a highly anticipated report released Friday.
Michael S. Barr, the Fed’s vice chair for supervision appointed by President Joe Biden, said in the exhaustive probe of the March 10 collapse of SVB that myriad factors coalesced to bring down what had been the nation’s 17th-largest bank.
Among them were bank executives who committed “textbook” failures in managing interest rate risk, Fed regulators who failed to understand the depth of SVB’s problems and then were too slow to react, and a social media frenzy that may have accelerated the institution’s demise.
Barr called for broad changes in the way regulators approach the nation’s complex and interwoven financial system.
“Following Silicon Valley Bank’s failure, we must strengthen the Federal Reserve’s supervision and regulation based on what we have learned,” he said.
“As risks in the financial system continue to evolve, we need to continuously evaluate our supervisory and regulatory framework and be humble about our ability to assess and identify new and emerging risks,” Barr added.
A senior Fed official said increased capital and liquidity might have helped SVB
survive. Central bank officials likely will turn their attention to cultural changes, noting that risks at SVB were not thoroughly examined. Future changes could see standardized liquidity requirements to a broader range of banks, and tighter supervision of compensation for bank managers.
Bank stocks were higher following the report’s release, with the SPDR S&P Bank
ETF up about 1.3%.
In a stunning move that continues to reverberate across the banking system and through financial markets, regulators shuttered SVB following a run on deposits triggered by liquidity concerns. To meet capital requirements, the bank was forced to sell long-dated Treasury notes at a loss incurred as rising interest rates ate into principal value.
Barr noted that SVB’s deposit run was exacerbated by fear spread on social media outlets that the bank was in trouble, combined with the ease of withdrawing deposits in the digital age. The phenomenon is something that regulators need to note for the future, he said.
?[T]he combination of social media, a highly networked and concentrated depositor base, and technology may have fundamentally changed the speed of bank runs,” Barr said in the report. “Social media enabled depositors to instantly spread concerns about a bank run, and technology enabled immediate withdrawals of funding.”
He used a broad brush in discussing the Fed’s failures, not mentioning San Francisco Federal Reserve President Mary Daly, under whose jurisdiction SVB sat. Senior Fed officials, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to speak frankly, said regional presidents aren’t generally responsible for direct supervision of the banks in their districts.
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said he welcomed the Barr probe and its internal criticism of Fed actions during the crisis.
“I agree with and support his recommendations to address our rules and supervisory practices, and I am confident they will lead to a stronger and more resilient banking system,” Powell said in a statement.
SVB was a darling of the tech industry as a place to turn to for high-flying companies in need of growth financing. In turn, the bank used billions in uninsured deposits as a base for lending.
The collapse, which happened over the matter of just a few days, sparked fears that depositors would lose their money as many of the accounts were above the $250,000 threshold for Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. insurance. Signature Bank
, which used a similar business model, also failed.
As the crisis unfolded, the Fed rolled out emergency lending measures while guaranteeing that depositors wouldn’t lose their money. While the moves have largely stemmed the panic, they spurred comparisons to the 2008 financial crisis and have led to calls for reversing some of the deregulatory measures taking in recent years.
Senior Fed officials said changes to the Dodd-Frank reforms helped spur the crisis, though they also acknowledge that the SVB case also was a failure of supervision. A change approved in 2018 reduced the stringency of stress testing for banks with less than $250 billion, a category in which SVB fell.
“We need to develop a culture that empowers supervisors to act in the face of uncertainty,” Barr wrote. “In the case of SVB, supervisors delayed action to gather more evidence even as weaknesses were clear and growing. This meant that supervisors did not force SVB to fix its problems, even as those problems worsened.”
Areas the Fed is likely to focus on include the types of uninsured deposits that raised concerns during the SVB drama, as well as a general focus on capital requirements and the risk of unrealized losses that the bank had on its balance sheet.
Barr noted that supervisory and regulatory changes likely won’t take effect for years.
The General Accountability Office also released a report Friday on the bank failures that noted “risky business strategies along with weak liquidity and risk management” that contributed to the collapse of SVB and Signature.
Correction: The General Accountability Office also released a report Friday. An earlier version misstated the name of the agency.
She lives in PA and gets most of her info from the internet.
It's a mystery to me how she earned any money over the course of her career online.
??? "she obviously made money somewhere." Janice never talks about her own investing. I suspect she has little money. She has said she lives in an apartment and doesn't own a car. I may be wrong about her having had a daughter.
Plenty of IHUBers know Janice personally. Shaj I think, and several others. I forget where she lives, Maryland perhaps or somewhere around there. .
She has little interest in the accounting aspects of stock frauds, while I usually start with the numbers and filings. Her approach is different than mine. But you don't have to be a CPA or Sherlock Holmes to spot stock scams. Most to them emit a pungent odor. In the late 1990s, I was involved with the SEC in shutting down a stock fraud that came into my line of work.
The $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ in pro sports today is beyond the pale! But, I have to hand it to those like him….. got a big fish on the line…..reel him in!!
My prediction is the Jets/Rodgers story will not end well either! I’m thinking (quietly) the Green/Gold saying good riddance!
The Texans made a few shrewd moves… but, lots of work to do down there! Hey, let’s pool our funds and throw out a BID for the Washington franchise! We will rename the team Washington Bulls!
Lamar Jackson is the real winner.
Lamar Jackson's five-year, $260 million deal with the Ravens that includes $185 million guaranteed.
History will prove me wrong…. But, I don’t see any of this year’s first round QB’s as future All-Stars!?!?!?!!!!!
I think Colts VERY risky…. And, as the Bears how those OSU guys work!
I’m super pissed at the ?? !
Interesting since she obviously made money somewhere and the only thing I can figure out was the market or inherited.
It wouldn't surprise me after someone lost money in the market to switch to bashing stocks while buying into the pump. It's a mystery for sure.
She told me she was married once but also said she never had a child. We've argued over the impact on social media on young kids and she doesn't seem to understand how damaging it can be to young kids.
EZ to his credit agrees with me when we call it unsocial media.
First Republic barely hangs on
First Republic is limping into the weekend, days after reporting disastrous first-quarter results. The bank is still working on a lifeline, with some involved saying it is touch and go whether the federal government will assist in some way, DealBook hears.
The precariousness of First Republic is a reminder that the banking crisis that erupted last month isn’t over yet and that a disorderly collapse of the lender could unleash yet more chaos in financial markets.
Time may be running out. Shares in First Republic are up nearly 10 percent in premarket trading, after having jumped yesterday, presumably in hopes that a rescue will emerge. But the bank’s stock is still at about $6, a far cry from the $150 it traded at a year ago.
A fundamental question is still hovering: Will the government force big banks into a rescue deal — which could involve those firms buying First Republic’s loans above market prices but below book value — or seize the troubled lender outright?
Which way the government will go remains uncertain. While officials in Washington are holding “urgent” discussions with potential rescuers, according to Reuters, it’s not clear how much aid the Biden administration will provide.
Closing First Republic would raise more issues. There’s the matter of the bank’s uninsured deposits, including the $30 billion that big banks had already injected as part of an earlier lifeline. (Remember that the F.D.I.C. insures deposits only up to $250,000 each, and many of First Republic’s deposits are well above that.)
It could also disrupt lending, including to the already embattled commercial real estate industry: Landlords are on the hook to refinance $137 billion of office mortgages this year, and nearly half a trillion dollars in the next four years.
New volatility could weigh on the Fed ahead of a crucial meeting next week on interest rate policy. Economists expect the central bank to raise rates by 25 basis points, but fresh strains on the nation’s banks may alter officials’ calculus.
In other banking news: The Fed is expected to issue its long-awaited autopsy on Silicon Valley Bank at 11 a.m Eastern; bank watchers want to know how government officials missed warning signs at the failed lender. The F.D.I.C. will also release a post-mortem on Signature Bank’s collapse today.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/28/business/dealbook/first-republic-deal.html
That's consistent with what I've gathered about her over the many years. I'd had read that she was drawn to attacking stock scams because her mother lost a lot of money in them. I vaguely remember her playing some junk penny, probably on Silicon Investor and before the tech crash in 2000.
"She got caught up in the dot.com era?" So yes.
Janice was married to an older university professor long ago. He died soon afterward. His obit can likely still be found online. What you almost never hear about Janice is that she had (or has) a daughter. I doubt Janice did well with motherhood and all the stuff that involves. I can't see her camping out with the Girl Scouts, for instance.
What to Watch as the Fed Releases Its Look Into Silicon Valley Bank
The Federal Reserve is set to release an examination of why its oversight of the bank failed to stem disaster at 11 a.m. on Friday.
By Jeanna Smialek
April 28, 2023, 5:00 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve is set to release a highly anticipated report on Friday examining what went wrong with its oversight of Silicon Valley Bank, which collapsed in mid-March, in the largest bank failure since the 2008 financial crisis.
The post-mortem comes as the aftershocks of Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse continue to shake the American financial system: First Republic, which required a cash infusion from other large banks as nervous customers pulled their deposits and fled, remains imperiled.
The Fed’s investigation into what went wrong at Silicon Valley Bank has been overseen by Michael S. Barr, the central bank’s head of supervision and one of the architects of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, which aimed to prevent a repeat of the 2008 crisis. The review was announced on March 13, just after S.V.B.’s failure and the government’s sweeping announcement on March 12 that it would protect the bank’s large depositors, among other measures to shore up the banking system.
That same weekend, the federal government also shuttered a second institution, Signature Bank. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which was the primary supervisor for Signature, will release its own report Friday.
Still, most of the attention has focused on S.V.B., in part because significant weaknesses at the bank appear to have started and grown progressively worse in plain sight in the years leading up to its demise. The bank had a large share of deposits above the government’s $250,000 insurance limit. That is a potential risk, given that uninsured depositors are more likely to pull their money at the first sign of trouble to prevent losing their savings.
The bank’s leaders also made a big bet on interest rates staying low. That became a problem as the Fed, trying to control rapid inflation, carried out its most aggressive rate increase campaign since the 1980s. The bank held longer-term bonds that dropped in value as interest rates rose, because newer debt issued at the higher rates became more attractive for investors.
Supervisors at the Fed were aware of many of the bank’s problems and had flagged and tried to follow up on some of them. Yet the issues were not resolved quickly enough to save the bank.
The questions that the review could answer center on what went wrong. Was it a problem at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, which supervised the bank, or did the fault rest with the Federal Reserve Board, which has ultimate responsibility for bank oversight? It is also unclear whether there was an issue with the Fed’s culture around — and approach to — supervision, or whether the existing rules were lacking.
“It’s a little bit of a mystery” what the report will hold, said Steven Kelly, a researcher at the Yale Program on Financial Stability, explaining that he had little expectation that the release would point fingers. “In some sense, they really need a head on a pike — and they’re not going to do that in this report.”
Jeff Hauser, director of the Revolving Door Project, said he was interested to see how the report would deal with the tone around bank supervision at the Fed, and the reality that Gregory Becker, S.V.B.’s chief executive, sat on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. That role gave Mr. Becker no official influence over bank oversight, but Mr. Hauser thinks that such positions might offer banks the advantage of more prestige.
Mr. Hauser said he also thinks an independent review is needed in addition to the Fed’s internal probe and whatever its inspector general — who is also looking into the matter — eventually releases. Mr. Barr will still have to work with his colleagues in the future, Mr. Hauser pointed out, and the central bank’s inspector general is appointed by the Fed chair.
“We need someone with some independence to dig in,” Mr. Hauser said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/28/business/economy/fed-silicon-valley-bank-failure-review.html
Byrce Young to the Panthers. The kid was hoping the Giants would tank for him.
Like many others, Ms. Shell came to online stock commentary in a roundabout way. Born in Kansas City in 1948, she earned a doctorate in art history from New York University, sailed to Europe on a freighter and settled in Milan, Italy. After losing a bundle on technology stocks, she got bit by the online bug in 1996 and quickly connected with a growing band of likeminded people.
Around year 2000 I was in a discount bookstore that had many copies of the book "Scam Dogs and Mo-Mo Mamas" on sale about 80% off regular price. Obviously it wasn't a best seller. I had been on stock boards from about 1996, Yahoo and later Raging Bull, and very rarely Silicon Investor. Investors Hub began around 1999.
Janice was around, as were thousands of wet-behind-the-ears stock newbies. I remember the Web Node joke and some of the other stuff. In broad outline, that article seems accurate. There were tons of new investors who knew absolutely nothing about investing. I tried to help a few especially when they talked about mortgaging their homes to buy tech stocks. By 2002 many of them had lost everything.
I wonder how much of this article is true.
Janice Shell Hunts Down 'Scam Dogs,' Irks Traders
May 10, 2000 12:01 am ET
For a look inside the crazy but increasingly contentious world of Internet chat rooms and stock trading read an excerpt from John R. Emshswiller's book, "Scam Dogs and Mo-Mo Mamas: Inside the Wild and Woolly World of Internet Stock Trading."
On April 1, 1999, the Business Wire news-release service carried an eye-popping announcement from WebNode.com. WebNode, the release boasted, had been granted an exclusive contract by the U.S. government to raise $4 billion by selling 40 million "nodes" on a "new countrywide state-of-the-art fiber optic Next Generation Internet to replace the existing copper backbone." Its motto: "Don't just use the Internet ... Own It!"
Scam Dogs Jacket
The reaction was swift. More than 1,000 people responded with e-mail expressing interest in the company and its offering. But there was a problem: WebNode was an April Fool's hoax.
For Janice Shell, one of the fertile imaginations behind the prank, part of the idea had been to educate and warn investors about the outlandish claims made by some real companies selling stock to unwitting investors. She and her online pals had also been looking for laughs.
Business Wire wasn't amused, however. In a suit filed in federal court in San Francisco, it accused Ms. Shell and her accomplices of fraud, trademark infringement, defamation, breach of contract and conspiracy. The two sides eventually settled, with one of Ms. Shell's co-defendant's homeowner's policy paying Business Wire $27,500.
Janice Shell was outraged at what she saw as the absurdity of being hauled into court over a prank like WebNode when so many real rip-offs fleece investors daily. "Gross misrepresentation in the name of fraud is apparently excusable, but an April Fool's parody must not go unpunished," she wrote in one e-mail.
Ms. Shell is one of a scattered legion of colorful characters -- many with some special interest to promote or ax to grind -- who have come to populate the financial byways of cyberspace. People who go by online names like Big Dog, Cavalry, Ga Bard, Icabod, Zorro, Truthseeker, and Tokyo Joe.
Janice Shell
Janice Shell's online odyssey: Lionized, vilified -- and searched for on two continents
Fans have lauded Ms. Shell and her online cohorts as citizen cybercops, who were helping to clean up a very dirty landscape in the often-bizarre online-discussion world. Detractors have lambasted them as cyberterrorists, who were trying to enrich themselves -- and shadowy foreign stock-trading allies -- by destroying the market values of legitimate companies.
But as the WebNode incident suggests, the Internet stock-trading world changed during the late 1990s. With more and more people trolling the Web in hopes of scoring big on the next new thing, with stock prices soaring or plummeting in seeming cyberseconds, it was getting harder for anyone to keep a sense of humor. The dollar amounts at stake quickly became so big that probing questions often generated nasty potshots, or worse. For all the giddiness and excitements that online trading had brought, the Net was becoming a tougher and, in ways, uglier place.
"Please keep away from my stocks," warned one e-mail message received by Ms. Shell. "You will be kill very sonn........ someone will found your body at street very soon." Another proclaimed: "If the day ever comes when you are lying in a coma, I would be only too honored to pull the plug and spit upon your wretched bones."
Like many others, Ms. Shell came to online stock commentary in a roundabout way. Born in Kansas City in 1948, she earned a doctorate in art history from New York University, sailed to Europe on a freighter and settled in Milan, Italy. After losing a bundle on technology stocks, she got bit by the online bug in 1996 and quickly connected with a growing band of likeminded people. They shared a sense of humor and a sense of outrage about some of the things happening in the stock market, especially in the raucous market for small-company stocks. Together, they roamed the Internet stock chat rooms, pulling off online jokes and tormenting little companies that they believed deserved it.
By the beginning of this year, Ms. Shell had posted some 25,000 messages on Silicon Investor, a popular Internet stock-discussion operation, and thousands more elsewhere. Other people had even started message boards to discuss Ms. Shell. One writer suggested creating a fund to "buy her a life."
For all the online hours, Ms. Shell insists she made absolutely no money from her efforts and never traded in the stocks she criticized. But her online critics didn't believe her for a nanosecond. Nobody, critics reasoned, could spend so much time online without compensation. "ARE THEY BEING PAID TO INVADE THREADS?" wrote one message-board player.
A "thread" is online lingo for a particular discussion site, usually devoted to a specific topic. Indeed, the Internet world of Ms. Shell and her fellow travelers, like many frontiers, has evolved its own terminology. There, a "lurker," by definition, can't "lol." But a "scam dog" could be a "mo-mo mama."
In this freewheeling environment, Ms. Shell hooked up with Jeffrey S. Mitchell, a software designer from Westport, Conn. In 1997, he created a fake company, TechniClone Inc., and started a Silicon Investor chat group about it. TechniClone had supposedly been granted a patent for the first "neural network" computer chip using "blastomere separation." Mr. Mitchell labeled the company "the next Intel." (Mr. Mitchell's make-believe firm had no connection to Techniclone Corp., a real company in Tustin, Calif.)
It was a modest prank. For one thing, he posted messages in other chat groups revealing the joke and inviting others to take part. In the spirit of the prank, Ms. Shell abandoned all inclinations toward cynicism and urged everyone to "BUY BUY BUY!!!!!"
From working together on an absurdly fake stock, it wasn't such a big leap for Ms. Shell and Mr. Mitchell to start working together on stocks they viewed as simply absurd.
An early target was Houston-based Cryogenic Solutions. An initial Cryogenic Solutions business was supposed to be preserving aborted fetuses for up to several decades by deep freezing them, with the idea that they could later be reimplanted in the womb. Howard Turney, who helped start the company and served for a while as its chairman, told The Wall Street Journal that the company already had one "baby in the can."
Cryogenic Solutions, which recently changed its name to CytoGenix Inc., later acknowledged that the world wasn't quite ready for its "pregnancy suspension technology." Instead, the company moved on to the business of manipulating DNA to fight aging and treat cancer, among other things. One particular capitalistic twist caught Ms. Shell's eye. In a press release announcing a licensing deal with a Costa Rican clinic, the company said the clinic had agreed to give "preferential access" for anyone owning 5,000 or more shares of Cryogenic Solutions stock.
The idea of shares for treatment struck Ms. Shell as "truly shocking." In a Silicon Investor message, she wrote that it "should be all anybody needs to know about the company and the people who run it." Dell Gibson, Cryogenic Solutions' executive vice president, defended the clinic stock arrangement, but said the plan hadn't been put into practice because the company was still in its research and development phase and didn't have any marketable products. Cryogenic Solutions, he added, had unfairly been a "favorite target of the bashers," with Ms. Shell as the "leader of the pack."
"Bashers" is a term online fans of a company use to describe people who criticize the company. As time passed, it became a label adversaries increasingly tried to stick on Ms. Shell and her associates. "***BASHERS ALERT***" one Cryogenic Solutions supporter wrote to warn that Ms. Shell and others entered an online discussion.
Ms. Shell was undeterred. "Hype and scam really do WORK. In the short term," she wrote one day as Cryogenic Solutions' stock price rose. "But hey! Go ahead! Give specious hope to cancer victims. Anything to make a buck, right?" As the online battle raged through 1998, Cryogenic Solutions' stock price ranged from under a quarter to over $3 a share. The stock, in over-the-counter trading, is currently about $1.45 a share.
Her longest running, bitterest online battle has concerned Las Vegas-based Amazon Natural Treasures Inc., which is involved in selling products from the rain forest in Brazil. Among them: an Amazon "hair growth formula" that according to a company news release "penetrates deep into the mammalian skin layer." The release added that natives had been using the formula for centuries "and to date you cannot find a 'bald' Brazilian Amazon Indian." (In a recent interview, Amazon Natural President Michael Sylver says the hair-growth product is selling well.)
The company had its coterie of fans, who helped push its stock to above $3 a share on the OTC Bulletin Board by the beginning of 1998, roughly triple a year earlier. But by early last year, Amazon Natural shares were down to about a dollar each and headed lower. It is currently trading at about 90 cents a share.
Ms. Shell contended the firm's problems were self-generated. Some were outlined in a July 1999 article on WSJ.com (Embattled Amazon Natural Threatens Critics With Suit , July 2, 1999). Among other things, the article quoted a company forecast that 1998 sales would reach $75 million; sales actually reached a bit over $392,000 and produced a net loss of $4.8 million.
Company officials were clear about whom to blame. "Janice Shell and numerous others," it said in a June 1999 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, had been "utilizing Internet chat rooms to defame, slander and libel" Amazon Natural. In February, the company filed a suit in Las Vegas federal court against Ms. Shell and others. Ms. Shell, who denies any wrongdoing, has filed a motion to have the charges against her dismissed on jurisdictional grounds. Other defendants have either filed similar dismissal motions, settled with Amazon Natural or have not yet been served, says company attorney Robert Qualey.
The online Amazon Natural debate has produced more than 60,000 discussionboard messages. The opposing sides routinely express utter contempt for each other. "U really are one sick depraved 2-bit stock hustling old lady," and a "chain smoking unemployed dung heap," a poster called Pugs wrote in messages to Ms. Shell.
"Brain transplant letting you down, Pugs?" Ms. Shell replied. "Those things from mice don't last long, I'm afraid."
Pugs -- who in real life is Gary A. Dobry, a professional artist and operator of a boxing gym in Palatine, Ill. -- wrote of running a credit report on Ms. Shell and finding five different names attached to her Social Security number. "Reasonable people can question how it is you make money so you can bash stocks all day and night. Do these 5 aliases have anything to do with how you might be paid?" Pugs wrote.
Ms. Shell says that if other names are attached to her Social Security number, it is by mistake.
Some critics also don't believe Ms. Shell lives in Italy. One online critic argued that she was actually a stockbroker from Georgia. Others placed her in a Texas trailer park.
Mr. Dobry says he has convincing evidence that Ms. Shell is really living and working in the Sacramento, Calif., area. When I mentioned in a phone interview with Mr. Dobry that I had called Ms. Shell at a number in Italy, he replied that it's easy to have one's real location shielded by forwarding calls through another location. The Amazon Natural suit listed addresses for her in Italy and California.
An Amazon Natural fan named Icabod exhibited a peculiar online venom for Shell. "WE ARE VERY VERY SORRY THAT YOU HAVE CANCER. TAKE CARE OF YOUR SELF." ... "I DO NOT CARE WHAT YOUR DOCTOR SAID. AS YOU TOLD ME ON THE PHONE. THERE IS ALWAYS HOPE." ... "THE BEST THING FOR YOU TO DO IS GET ALL STRESS OUT OF YOUR LIFE," wrote Icabod in a message posted on Silicon Investor.
Ms. Shell vehemently denies having cancer or ever talking to Icabod. Icabod couldn't be located for comment.
An even stranger online adventure for Ms. Shell began with e-mail from someone using the name Zorro, who seemed knowledgeable about Amazon Natural and not a fan of the company. One rather ominous message, apparently about Amazon Natural's president, Mr. Sylver, read: "TIC TIC TIC TIC TOC MIKE SLYVER -- DOA. Z."
Zorro's real name supposedly was Dante Dey La Vega, though he also signed e-mail messages as Don Diego Dey La Vega. (The "real" name of the legendary swashbuckler Zorro was Don Diego de la Vega.) Dante was portrayed as a wealthy Mexican native and master swordsman living in Vancouver, British Columbia. Ms. Shell says she became fond of her online Zorro, though they never met or even spoke.
Then, to her shock, Dante was suddenly dead, a victim of cancer. A man Ms. Shell came to know as Richard "Rick" Marcasse of Manhattan Beach, Calif., delivered news of Dante's demise via telephone. Ms. Shell came to believe that Mr. Marcasse was involved in shorting Amazon Natural stock-a trading technique aimed at profiting from stock-price declines.
Mr. Dobry, the Amazon Natural fan, argued that Mr. Marcasse was actually Richard Marchese. In early 1999, Mr. Marchese settled SEC charges that he had "engaged in repeated fraudulent conduct" while president of a defunct brokerage firm called Power Securities. Without admitting or denying the SEC's allegations, Mr. Marchese agreed to a bar from any association with a brokerage firm or any participation in a penny stock offering. Mr. Marchese was also acquitted of federal criminal fraud charges in 1996, according to SEC records.
Are Mr. Marchese and Mr. Marcasse the same person? No, said the man who called me late one evening and identified himself as Ric (no "k") Marcasse. He acknowledged communicating with Ms. Shell and said Dante "was a very nice guy." He said he isn't the Marchese of Power Securities and has never traded Amazon Natural stock.
I asked him what he does for a living. "Semi-retired businessman" and "consultant for the government" doing "classified" work, he says. He told me he is leaving his place in Manhattan Beach -- which is located on an expensive beachfront stretch known as The Strand -- and moving to London.
I left messages for Richard Marchese with his ex-wife in Las Vegas. One Sunday, I received a loud, angry phone call from a man identifying himself as Mr. Marchese. He demanded that I stop calling and insisted that he has nothing to do with the matters I was asking about. He hung up abruptly.
SEC records show that in a 1998 deposition, Mr. Marchese gave his address as a location on The Strand in Manhattan Beach. The street number he gave to the SEC is the same one that Ms. Shell has for Mr. Marcasse.
Then there was Sharebear, another shadowy online figure, whose messages on the Raging Bull stock-chat Web site describe him as a retired lawyer whose stock holdings include Amazon Natural. But his main beef with Ms. Shell involved another target of her criticism: a little Internet company in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., called Hitsgalore.com Inc. that was the plaintiff in a suit against her in Tampa, Fla., federal court. The company recently dropped that suit.
"JANICE SHELL, YOU COMMON PERSON WHO SEEKS TO BE ABOVE ALL," Sharebear screamed in one message. "PROVE ME WRONG! I HAVE E-MAILS ... EXPLAINING YOUR PAST DUE RENTAL, THE EVICTION NOTICE YOU WILL NOT OPEN AND THE ... PLEA FOR HELP BECAUSE YOU ARE GOING TO KILL YOURSELF. PROVE ME WRONG. I WAS GIVEN THESE DOCUMENTS AND I HAVE A RELEASE FROM AN INDIVIDUAL WHO SENT THEM. ... SHELL GAME OVER? YOU BET IT IS!"
Sharebear also accused Ms. Shell of taking payoffs and, for good measure, of engaging in weird sexual practices. Sharebear couldn't be located for comment.
Ms. Shell says Sharebear somehow came into possession of some private emails she wrote.
With the lawsuits and the likes of Icabod and Sharebear, Ms. Shell says that it is getting harder and harder to find things to laugh about. "Frankly, I'm finding unlooked-for notoriety not all that amusing," she wrote in one online message. "This is getting pretty rough, and I'm not enjoying it. There are some real crazies ... and they'll stop at nothing. I've always wanted an interesting life, but this may go a bit too far."
Copyright 2000 by John R. Emshwiller. From the book "Scam Dogs and Mo-Mo Mamas: Inside the Wild and Woolly World of Internet Stock Trading," published by HarperBusiness. Reprinted with permission.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB957889440381713253
This YT piece is a hoot if you didn't see it on the DD board. A secondary lesson is that generally investors should shun stocks making headlines, a notion that used to be called "The Business Week Cover Jinx." Variations turn up in sports, entertainment and many other fields.
Truist reports first quarter 2023 results
https://www.tipranks.com/news/press-releases/truist-reports-first-quarter-2023-results-2
It ain't sexy but it pays a nice divy.
Sears is closing their last store here in NC about 20 minutes away.
Breaks my heart to see them leave but I'm going tomorrow to see what I can find.
https://myfox8.com/news/north-carolina/sears-in-friendly-center-final-north-carolina-location-will-close/
Bought gas Friday morning at our local curb market. I know the owner and we talk about gas prices every so often. I asked him if he had raised the price lately and he said I just changed the price out front and now I'm changing the pumps for a 20 cent increase. I said give me 5 minutes first.
This is a joke.
Exxon CEO’s Pay Jumps 52% Amid Rising Oil Prices, Record Profit
Total compensation includes stock awards of $24.9 million and nearly $6.4 million bonus
https://www.wsj.com/articles/exxon-ceos-pay-jumps-52-amid-rising-oil-prices-record-profit-a8069ca0
Did he actually improve operations by 52% or just raise the prices?
Large cap div payers such as FDX (and UPS) are still performing well.
Shocked last week to learn that CPA son had put *a few dollars* into a fractional interest in a bitcoin on a lark. So he'll have that and perhaps $50 (or less now) in Dogecoins.
There are some deals out there. As I've said buy what you know.
"FedEx FDX +0.94% plans to boost its quarterly dividend by 10% in an otherwise quiet week for such announcements.
FedEx (ticker: FDX) declared a quarterly disbursement to $1.26 a share from $1.15 earlier this week. The increase brings the annualized dividend to $5.04 a share. The dividend is payable on July 3 to shareholders of record at the close of business on June 12."
I have a 23 YO son who lives at home. He is my DD. Sometimes my neighbor will be out late and he'll drop them off and pick them up later.
Do you ever use Uber or similar to get around? I have the app on my phone but haven't tested it.
Ford’s first quarter sales increase 10.1% on improved F-Series truck production
PUBLISHED TUE, APR 4 20239:20 AM EDTUPDATED 39 MIN AGO
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Michael Wayland
KEY POINTS
Ford on Tuesday reported a roughly 10% increase in its quarterly U.S. sales, led by jumps in its critical F-Series pickups and Bronco SUVs.
The Detroit automaker sold 475,906 vehicles during the first three months of the year, up 10.1% compared to subdued levels a year earlier due to supply chain problems.
The increase comes as Wall Street analysts monitor rising vehicle inventories and incentives for the U.S. automotive industry following historically low levels of both during the past three years.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/04/ford-motor-f-q1-sales.html
I'll let him know he'll appreciate that. His allegiance to AL got the better of him but UConn saved the day for him.
'
Congrats Shermie Jr. ~~ well done son!!
Bring your laptop to work. This would have worked.
Google to cut down on employee laptops, services and staplers for ‘multi-year’ savings
PUBLISHED MON, APR 3 20231:07 PM EDT
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Jennifer Elias
KEY POINTS
In a rare companywide memo from CFO Ruth Porat, Google kicked off “multi-year” employee service cuts.
The company is also cutting back on laptops and equipment, according to more detailed internal documents viewed by CNBC.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/03/google-to-cut-down-on-employee-laptops-services-and-staplers-to-save.html
I didn't want post 54,000 here to be a dumb question so I'm not asking it.
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Today's large cap can quickly become tomorrow's small cap or vice versa. That said all stocks are fair game here except pinks.
What size is "small"? There are many definitions. Some people define a small public company as one with a market cap under $1 billion. Others define small cap as under $2 billion. And there are yet other definitions. Over the last two decades the word "small" has come to mean larger and larger companies! To confuse matters, NASDAQ's small cap market system continues to list truly small public companies, many of which would be classified as nano-cap by the definitions, below. Here are some current definitions from Investopedia and Investor Words.
Market Cap Investopedia Investor Words
Mega-Cap over $200 billion over $250 billion
Large-Cap $10 billion - $200 billion. $5 billion - $250 billion
Mid-Cap $2 billion - $10 billion $1 billion - $5 billion
Small-Cap $300 million - $2 billion $250 million - $1 billion
Micro-Cap $50 million - $300 million under 250 million
Nano-Cap under $50 million --
Some T/A sites:
http://www.americanbulls.com/
http://www.stockta.com/
http://www.stockconsultant.com./
A screener that may be useful:
http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/finder/deluxestockscreen.aspx?query=Institutional+Ownership+Up+....
http://www.secform4.com/index.php
Please- No Pink Sheet Stocks on the board and don't disparage others and their trading. Thank you!
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