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It would probably take years to produce "a bathtub full of Fluicide". There is no doubt *some* dose of Fluicide that will kill a rat. But it might be so much that NNVC can't manufacture it in any reasonable time.
Testing is the issue. I won't call NNVC a "lifestyle" company, although I do think the people running it are better scientists than business managers. Saying that there has been no product for 5 years is the same thing as saying the necessary testing hasn't been done, because in this business the way you get a product out the door is by jumping through all the testing hoops.
Each stage of testing is a no man's zone with potential land mines. What investors see is that NNVC hasn't even got through the first no man's zone yet, so there are lots of ways left to get blown up.
The price has been at 0.55 before. Then it went back down. To be sure, we could get another pop to 0.70 or thereabouts. That is most likely to happen if another breathless newsletter writer with a large subscription base touts NNVC as the next sure thing. Needless to say, it won't be institutional investors causing the spike. But if there isn't further news that matters, like completing toxicity testing with no problems, the price will drift right back down to below 0.50.
Toxicity testing is not a waste of time. Like so many people here, you pretend to *know* that Fluicide is harmless to people when it's never been tried on people. In fact, fluicide has only been tested on a rats and maybe a couple of other species. Your overweening confidence is the sort of attitude that brought us thalidomide.
At the beginning of the 20th century food and medicine makers decided to switch from using ethanol as a solvent for things like making vanilla extract to using methanol. Methanol was cheaper, it was easy to produce and wasn't taxed. Extensive testing was done -- methanol was no more dangerous than ethanol to rats, dogs, hamsters, monkeys, and every other animal tested. In most species it was a bit safer than ethanol. The result was a medical disaster. Only many years later, after the damage to humans became all too obvious, was methanol removed and ethanol used instead. Humans metabolize methanol differently than every other mammal.
So toxicity testing is necessary. Then phase I testing is necessary -- to determine safety, not efficacy, in humans. We are not rats. And investors are well aware that every stage of testing can yield ugly surprises. Which is why right now NNVC never gets above 50 cents a share for long.
The problem is that getting to the point where they can carry out such trials is taking years.
At the molecular level all chemistry looks mechanical.
That is my main point as well. If all these announcements about architects and clean room firms had come out a year ago I'd be a lot more optimistic about the company. Eventually NNVC will announce that they have selected a plumber, an electrician, and a guy who can hang sheet rock. The "WE GOT THE 'CIDES" people will then cheer those press releases on as major milestones. I will remain unimpressed. I will count completion of toxicity studies and completion of the manufacturing facility as major milestones. There is an outside chance that the former will happen by the end of 2013, but no chance of the latter this year. And no, I don't expect to see any human trials this year either, whether in Australia or anywhere else.
Intelligent investors with serious money know you can't look at one or two stocks that went to the moon to know what the odds are for some speculative biotech stock. But retail investors do that sort of thing all the time. They are regularly taken to the cleaners.
"Remember that FLUCIDE did not just come about by accident."
Did I ever say that it did? So what? -- most new drugs these days don't come about by accident.
"It is not made in a chemisty lab and not in an industrial factory and is made by medical doctors after years of research in a special laboratory."
Fluicide is made in a bio-chemistry lab just like all those other drugs. Its inventors are doctors and PhDs, just like for all those other drugs. They are attempting to scale up production by - gasp! -- making it in a factory in Connecticut. Sorry, fluicide isn't that special -- it's a drug with a different mode of action than other drugs, but it's still a drug. You look at its unique mode of action and say Fluicide must be much safer than other drugs. The FDA will agree that its mode of action is unique, and that it's entirely different from any other drug that's been tried in humans. For precisely that reason I'm sure they'll be even more demanding than usual of data for safety in humans. It will cost money to meet those demands.
"Over 3500 tests in animals shows no or little toxicity."
You could have said the same thing about methanol.
"The formulas of FLUCIDE are intended to go after the VIRUSes and not the host. Only the viruses will be affected."
Intention and reality are two different things. We won't know that it doesn't have any deleterious effects on humans until we test it on humans.
"Any toxic assertions are assertions only at this time."
Any safety assertions are only assertions at this time.
All your hand waving and special pleading can not change the underlying reality. The safety and efficacy of Fluicide must be tested, and with the same arduous and expensive procedures as are used for other drugs. Investors are holding back because they can add up the numbers, and are wondering just how many more dilutions of shares have to take place before profitability is reached, especially after they take into account that NNVC never meets its deadlines.
"The VIRICUDE FLUCIDE has been proven in testing to be nontoxic in any host including humans."
I'm sorry, but that's a large enough distortion of the truth to be called a lie. The safety of fluicide has never been tested in humans. In fact, it has only been tested in rats and maybe a handful of other standard laboratory animals. Remember that a rat dies of old age in less time than it may take a problem caused by chronic long term exposure to even show up in a human. Sure, there are reasons to believe that Fluicide is probably safe for people. But that's a far cry from saying that its been proven. We won't have strong evidence that Fluicide is safe for humans until toxicity tests have been completed and phase 1 tests have been completed. Even then, we don't have certainty. There are instances of drugs that gone all the way through to FDA acceptance only to be shown to be much more dangerous than was expected once they were tried on a large group of patients.
For nearly all mammals, including rats, methanol is safer than ethanol. But humans metabolize methanol differently than other mammals do, so for us modest quantities of ethanol are safe but methanol is a deadly poison. Safety for rats and hamsters does not necessarily imply safety for humans.
Good grief, are you saying people should buy this stock on the basis of past rumors about a buy out that never happened?
Even the most optimistic booster of NNVC (and I'm not one of them) knows that NNVC won't have Fluicide on the market within a year. So rationally, there is no reason at all why a flu outbreak this year should cause NNVC's share price to go up.
I'm not sure how relevant this sort of article is. We all know that influenza is a devastating disease. We all know that it remains a serious threat. We all know that if NNVC had a cure that was proven safe and effective in humans they should be able to make money hand over fist.
All of the concern is over whether NNVC will be able to execute its plan and get Fluicide to the market. That has nothing to do with whether or not there's another serious outbreak of flu this year or next year.
When people say they want to live longer they of course mean that they want to live longer in a healthy state. Nobody wants to live 100 years and spend the last 30 of them as feeble and demented.
What substantial sign of progress? They hired an architect. Fine. Obviously, if they are ever to have a manufacturing facility before they declare bankruptcy they're going to have to have an architect design the thing. But that hardly qualifies as "substantial" progress. Substantial progress would be:
1. Completing toxicity testing.
2. Completing the manufacturing facility.
3. Completing phase 1 testing.
4. Completing phase 2 testing.
5. Completing phase 3 testing.
6. Getting FDA approval for Fluicide.
(Notice how often the word "completing" appears?) No other sort of progress counts as "substantial" and I'm sure the stock market will agree with me.
You ignore the fact that they don't.
Blah blah blah, blah blah blah. You conveniently gloss over the fact that the things that haven't been done are precisely the necessary things expensive enough to break the company.
NNVC's cash position combined with the very high costs of moving forward does indeed make their situation a "normal position" for a technology start up. But just remember that the normal thing for a start up to do is go bankrupt. The big winners that make billionaires are the rare exceptions, not the norm.
NNVC is the biggest gamble in my portfolio. It's a gamble that might yet pay off, but a gamble it certainly is. Patience you say -- I agree, I should have been more patient. I should have waited longer to buy any shares in the first place.
None of the things you have described are terribly expensive. Setting up a manufacturing facility and doing human trials are very expensive. That is why NNVC never seems to take the steps needed to actually get out a product.
Their cash position is excellent if they continue to do almost nothing as they have for the past few years. But if they actually want to get through toxicity testing, manufacturing fluicide, phase 1 testing and phase 2 testing, you will see their burn rate shoot up and realize just why they've been so reluctant to spend money.
I see NNVC's actions as more likely a deliberately slowing down due to a precarious cash position. If they had tons of money in the bank there'd be no reason not to go full steam ahead on the manufacturing facility and the toxicity testing, and they could continue with their side projects on other diseases at the same time.
For the past year this stock has been seeing lower highs and lower lows. Now it has a hard time staying above 50 cents. So, no, I wouldn't put any great hope in an end to tax loss selling driving up the price. What's pushing the price down in the first place is not tax loss selling but people giving up on a company that never meets a deadline. The only things that will salvage this stock are completion of toxicity testing and actually beginning phase I testing.
"so NNVC is or is not going to produce something in 2013?"
Maybe they will start toxicity testing sometime before the end of 2013. I don't expect any more. Certainly those expecting phase I trials to start in 2013 are wildly optimistic. NNVC will be bleeding cash all this time, so expect another round of dilution before anything of significance is accomplished.
And who knows, by then there may be a general vaccine for flu and the development of Fluicide will be moot.
Patrick Cox hypes any tiny start up company that seems to have really nifty keen wow wee technology, without any consideration of the financial condition of that company. I remember one company he was hyping (it was a semiconductor laser company, if I recall correctly) and he couldn't understand why its stock kept going down, down down -- until the day it declared bankruptcy. Every technology start up is running a race between the day it has its first real customers and the day it runs out of money. Cox never gives any consideration to the latter possibility.
I always find it amusing that when people point out the obvious problems with NNVC they are always accused of being Evil Stock Manipulators who are shorting the stock, but when people hype the latest scrap of news and promise valuations of $50 a share they are never called Evil Stock Manipulators who are pumping and dumping.
The stock price goes down for the simplest of reasons. People see another big round of dilution coming up as the time tables stretch out into infinity.
Running out of money before there is a salable product is a very fundamental issue for companies like NNVC. Every month that ticks by without clear progress on making Fluicide a product is another month's operating expenses out of the bank account. I'd say the market is pricing in another hefty dilution of shares.
Clearly the market is saying that it doesn't believe NNVC will actually get those toxicity tests and human trials done in a timely fashion. Unfortunately, given NNVC's history, there is good reason for the skepticism.
Well, 0.41 looks a lot more plausible now. Nothing but actual, tangible results (not just PR about plans to get results at some indefinite time in the future) has any chance of moving this stock up.
Why would today's announcement drive the stock up? All it did was tell us who will be doing the toxicity testing. That's not the sort of news that will make people want to pile into the stock.
Right now I see a bid of 0.490, an ask of 0.499. I'd say its even odds whether we see 0.41 or 0.61 first. So while I'm no believer in algorithms that can predict prices weeks or months in advance, it doesn't look like it has "blown up".
I believe you're right -- it's $3000, not $2000. Either way, a pathetic fraction of my total capital losses. And I bet there's at least 20 million other Americans in the same boat as me.
The problem with that theory is that ever since the big crash most of us retail investors have all the tax loss carryover we will ever need. I can deduct the $2000 maximum every year from now until the day I die. So it gains me nothing to sell a stock at a loss for the "tax benefit".
While I have no faith in magical stock price prediction algorithms what NNVC needs now is not more PR, of which the market is getting very weary, but actual tangible accomplishment towards getting Fluicide approved. Announcing that toxicity testing has completed successfully would be nice, and might even push the dang stock price above 0.70 again. OTOH, announcing another shelf offering would be a quick way to get the stock price to 0.40.
P.S., yes, JG36 is the same person as JG35. For some reason this board only lets me log in as JG35 on one computer. I gave up trying to get that to work on any other computer and created a new id.