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Another debenture situation:
http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Healthcare/Biotechnology_and_Drugs/threadview?m=te&bn=22583&am...
And the stock went from $20 this spring to $.88 now.
Posted by esammee on Yahoo:
>>GERON ANNOUNCES DIRECT EQUITY ISSUANCE
Menlo Park, CA – April 8, 2003 – Geron Corporation (Nasdaq: GERN) announced today that it has entered into an agreement to sell four million shares of Geron common stock to two investors at $4.60 per share, for gross proceeds of $18.4 million. In connection with the sale, the company issued warrants to purchase an additional 600,000 shares at $6.34 per share. Finally, the company holds an option to put an additional 400,000 shares to the investors, depending on performance of the stock. Total proceeds from the issuances could upon exercise amount to $24 million.<<
>>GERON AMENDS DEBENTURES
Menlo Park, CA – May 27, 2003 -- Geron Corporation (Nasdaq: GERN) announced today that its Series D convertible debentures have been amended to provide for an automatic conversion into equity on the maturity date.
The current outstanding Series D debentures amount to $15.0 million plus accrued interest and have a maturity date of June 30, 2005. The amendment eliminates future interest accruals and provides for a fixed conversion price of $5.00 per share with a mandatory conversion date of June 30, 2005, if not previously converted. The terms of the warrants issued with the debentures were also amended to adjust the exercise prices to a premium to Geron’s current market price. The exercise periods on the warrants were unchanged.
“This agreement with the holder of the debenture, to provide for the mandatory conversion of the debt into equity, changes the debt instrument into an equity instrument and eliminates the $15 million repayment obligation,” stated David L. Greenwood, Geron’s chief financial officer. “With this amendment, except for a minor amount of equipment financing, Geron is debt free. Combined with the $20 million financing in April, the company’s cash position is improved by $35 million. In this respect, the current financial resources, including $56 million in cash, should fund the company beyond the next two years.”<<
I think this is the most likely explaination for current Geron price. NOte that debeture holders could short in comfort knowing that the lower the price went, the cheaper they could both buy and cover.
Don't discount the possibility of shares moving from the right hip pocket to the left hip pocket, to the front left pocket then the front right pocket, and back to the right hip pocket...
The "capital markets" are no longer primarily capital markets. Companies are merely trading vehicles at the mercy of all those taking their cut out of the trade, not the building and success of the business, the investment. They ought to be called the "trading markets." - esammee
I agree, and in my opinion that is part of what's wrong with this country (in addition to corrupt elections and corporations being more important than people).
In order to have a really healthy economy I would think you would need a healthy capital market to provide investment and business growth. The Fed is trying to accomplish this with manipulation instead of going to the source of the problem, a perverted capitalistic system.
Dogs & Cats seem to be taking the place of "moms" here LOL!
Fortunately, all my cockatiels usually do is add an extra letter or two.
I've been monitoring institiutional interest in a number of stocks to see what effect it has on price stability. My original assumption was that a stock with high insty interest would have more price stability but I've found that that is not true. NBIX was over 100% institutional and it still plunged 80%.
OMG was also high institutional and it plunged dramatically to. It was interesting to note that in the case of OMG most of the institutions held until the stock recovered. This has led me to the theory that these instys loan their shares to the hedgies for a time to let them rock the market, then call them in.
There is gross manipulation in the market, and I don't think Geron is an exception. The MM's & hedgies make more jerking a stock around than they do buying and holding. Personally I think the practice of shorting a stock should be abandoned because while some claim it helps to stabilize a stock, I just don't buy it.
I do believe that institutional interest has to go up before GERN stock matures, and am watching this closely.
What would you do if you were big money or big pharma and you saw a small cap with technology that would revolutionize medicine in the next decade?
Would you pat them on the head and give them plenty of money for research or would you try to strangle them by restricting access to capital and hope you could buy them out?
Geron has a poison pill. They can't be bought out now because they have the IP, the university partnerships, Chinese partnership, and animal cloning division. They also have no debt and a nice nest egg.
It was different a few years back, and attempts to hold them down would explain the current stock price.
I have sent detailed complaints directly to Yahoo admin. The last even gave a summary of the abusive posts for several of the jerks and thanks to someone who searched for PaulaGem I could also summarize my posts before I was TOS'd. I also saved a copy of this just in case.
It is so obvious that certain posters only trash other posters and never contribute anything, but they do nothing. Either Yahoo itself is in league with the hedgies or they've paid of half of Yahoo's staff.
It's like tiptoeing through a feeder lot over there.
If this was dillutive wouldn't they have to disclose the terms?
Just starting to follow this one.
So how many German civilians did you expect to be killed in the bombing of London???
Ok, so you were saying no German civilians were killed in London????
Yeah, I'll agree with that. But it's sort of nonsensical.
Talk about ignorance: "43,000 dead in London vs. not 1 dead German civilian."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II
Link to SEC:
http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?company=&CIK=GERN&filenum=&State=&SIC=&o...
Looks like two filings on 8/4 a shelf offering for $250 mil and employee benefits.
Thanks esammee - can you give us a guess as to how long it takes for a program at this stage to get to the clinic?
OK- this is the problem with the photos.
Alteration is way too obvious.
Here are two touchups I did in just a few minutes.
http://www.spiritsites.com/stocks/smoke1.jpg
I simply tweaked the contrast and brightness to make this one worse.
http://www.spiritsites.com/stocks/smoke.jpg
In this picture I used the clone tool, but I cloned the darker smoke from smoke1 onto the unaltered picture, leaving the buildings with normal contrast and brightness and inserting the darker smoke.
Real easy and much more believable than the Reuters photos.
Thanks, it was good enough.
It took me a couple of minutes to do both enhancements.
http://www.spiritsites.com/stocks/smoke.jpg
http://www.spiritsites.com/stocks/smoke1.jpg
Smoke1 is a simple contrast & brightness tweak.
Smoke is a clone overlaying smoke1 darkened smoke cloud onto the original photo with a clone tool, leaving the buildings with normal contrast but making the smoke tarker.
The Reuters hack job was way too amateurish to be believed.
WTF are you talking about?
If the question was intelligible I would consider answering it.
I think he just discovered that he put his underwear on backwards.
Can anyone find a decent resolution of the original?
If you can post a link to it I'll touch it up myself and show you that it could be done better by a non-professional.
In addition, I will say that even if the touchup is less obvious visually there are computer algorithms that can spot tampering and I can't imagine someone like Reuters not using this tool.
Something really stinks here, and it's not just the guy accused of tampering with the photo.
My point is that the manipulation is so obvious that a photo editor would have to be blind drunk to miss it.
It's obvious that no one commenting on this here has any graphics arts experience or ever used a "clone" tool.
It would be so easy to do it right. Take a second picture and apply some more smoke from that one without repeating those little curlique in the picture. If you use a clone tool and clone the same pattern over in the same pic and over and you're begging for discovery.
The problem I have with this is that the doctoring is so obvious as to be absurd.
In my opinion this can only be some kind of setup.
I asked you nicely to stop the SPAM - now you are gone..
Your repetition of this post has reached the level of SPAM. Please desist.
If you wish to engage in real conversation, please go back to my post on electronic voting machines being capable of reprogramming mid-election and rebut anything you think is incorrect.
If you can not find any inaccuracies in the article, please concede that we no longer have democratic elections in this country.
Aug. 5/6, 2006 -- On August 1, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a voluminous 370-page report on the use of off-shore trusts and shell corporations by American billionaires to avoid taxes. The report highlights the off-shore and tax-dodging activities of the notorious Bush billionaire contributors -- Sam and Charles Wyly, also known as the "Wyly Brothers." The Wylys, who came to prominence as the financial backers of various 527 political action committees in the 2000 and 2004 elections (the anti-John McCain Republicans for Clean Air in 2000 and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004), developed a series of 58 interlocking trusts and and shell corporations that maximized stock options and warrants to make huge profits and avoid taxes. The tax avoidance contrivances were used between 1994 and 2004.
Several facts brought out in the Senate report are noteworthy. One is the decision by Sam Wyly in December 2000 to withdraw annuity assets in a Cayman Islands trust associated with the Bermuda-based Scottish Re Group, the global reinsurance company. Nine months later, reinsurance companies were left holding the bag for the 911 terrorist attacks. In September 2000, the assets of two Wyly trusts, Lake Providence International Trust and Castle Creek International Trust, an Isle of Man entity, were valued at $75 million. The Senate report also states that by June 2001, three months before the 911 attacks, the Wylys had completely divested themselves of Scottish Re shares: "After the Wylys decided to withdraw from Scottish Re, the Wyly-related offshore entities began to sell their shares. Ms. Boucher [Michelle Boucher, a Cayman Islands accountant and Canadian citizen who was also a senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Scottish Annuity and Life Holdings, a Wyly Cayman Islands corporation] kept Sam and Evan Wyly [Evan is Sam's son] informed about these sales. In addition, by June 2001, Maverick [Maverick Capital Ltd., a Wyly family $8 billion hedge fund] sold virtually all of the Scottish shares it had purchased."
As the the revelations about the Wylys' dodgy investments in Scottish Re Group were made public in the Senate report, the company's second quarter losses were pegged at $130 million and the firm's stock plunged by 82 percent. After this news broke, Scottish Re's chief executive officer Scott Willkomm resigned.
The Senate report also identifies Winston Thayer Capital Partners as an investor in the Wyly off-shore trust network. Winston Partners is co-owned by George W. Bush's brother Marvin Bush and Marvin's longtime friend Scott Andrews. Winston Thayer Capital Partners is a joint venture with Thayer Capital Partners, which is owned by GOP political majordomo Fred Malek. Until 2000, Marvin Bush sat on the board of Stratesec, the company that had security contracts for the World Trade Center. After leaving Stratesec, Marvin joined the board of HCC Insurance, a World Trade Center insurer.
Maverick Capital is linked to the University of Texas Investment Management Company (UTIMCO), which under the direction of Wyly and George W. Bush friend and partner Tom Hicks (Hicks purchased the Texas Rangers from Bush in a lucrative deal that made Bush several millions of dollars -- Hicks is also co-owned of Clear Channel Communications), invested university public funds in Maverick Capital, the Carlyle Group, Bass Brothers Enterprises (an investor in Harken Energy, on whose board George W. Bush sat), and Perot Systems Corp. (owned by H. Ross Perot). University of Texas Regent and UTIMCO board member, former Texas GOP Rep. and George W. Bush crony Tom Loeffler, also backed the UTIMCO investments in Maverick Capital.
The Senate investigation of the Wylys points out how the Bush family and their cronies use off-shore tax havens, shell and "folding tent" corporations, and tax loopholes to fund their political and covert intelligence adventures. The editor pointed out that an Isle of Man entity called Five Star Trust was used to fund the covert vote rigging operations that engineered the 2004 presidential election. The Senate subcommittee is now unearthing the mechanisms by which the Republicans use tax free money to pay for their "black ops" without leaving electronic trails thus ensuring "plausible deniability."
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/
I knew the system was "fixed" the morning after the last presidential election when I read about the lines of voters that couldn't place their vote in Ohio.
I have since learned that it is much worse than I imagined.
If you believe I am in error, please show me what part of these arguments is in error:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/9707/36345.html
http://openvotingfoundation.org/
Since these aguments are specific and detailed please respond in the same manner.
I knew the system was "fixed" the morning after the last presidential election when I read about the lines of voters that couldn't place their vote in Ohio.
I have since learned that it is much worse than I imagined.
If you believe I am in error, please show me what part of these arguments is in error:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/9707/36345.html
http://openvotingfoundation.org/
Since these aguments are specific and detailed please respond in the same manner.
I'm anti-Bush. I don't believe there's any way that war can be won so we need to STOP the war, not lose it, there is a difference.
We have four fighters protecting the east coast. Maybe if we quit wasting billions overseas we could beef that up a bit, what do you say?
Now, let's imagine you want to create the near perfect vote tampering system ...
Here are some of the most desirable characteristics of a 'fraud enabled' voting system, and the "best" part is the AccuVote TS pictures posted on the http://openvotingfoundation.org website are a sufficient proof that this machine can achieve all of those goals :
- The fraud should leave no traces as soon as the machine is reset / powered off
- The fraud should not require moving, or removing any part of the machine
- The fraud program or operation should not be revealed even after serious forensic examination
- The fraud should not require any specific resident software in the machine to operate
- The fraud should not be detected by a careful source code examination or certification process
- The fraud should use only the hardware present in the regular AccuVote TS machine without any change
- The fraud should resist a careful instrumented realtime debugging / attempt to discover it's inner working
- The fraud should not disrupt the voting machine's expected behavior for the user to prevent tipping about what is going on
- The fraud should not be detectable even by a skilled observer or the manufacturer's own technicians at the voting booth
- The fraud should not require the fraudulent operator to type anything on the keyboard
- The fraud should not require the fraudulent operator to even touch the machine
- The Fraud should be possible even when the fraudulent operator can be observed by third parties
- The Fraud should be self contained and should not require any previous or subsequent intervention on the voting machine
- The fraud should be usable upon request, only in selected voting booths that are not known before the election starts
- The fraud should be possible at any moment before, during or after the voting period
- The fraud should not require the fraudulent operator to carry a bulky device such as a laptop or a handheld computer, an organizer, etc ...
- Once the fraud is done, or if caught (either while performing the fraud or after), the operator should be able to safely erase all proofs in less than 2 seconds and be certain to avoid any conviction.
- It should be possible to apply the fraud (or different frauds, or to 'undo' the fraud) as many times as required before, during or after the election.
- It should be possible to use a voter as the fraudulent operator
- The fraud should not require guesswork (no dependence on external information)
- The fraud should not require tampering with the election result communication since it leaves auditable traces
- The fraud should be performed entirely at the voting booth, requiring no implication at the higher levels.
- The fraud should be easy to plan and execute to minimize traces and reduce liabilities to either a single individual or a very small group.
- The fraudulent operator should not have any specific skills and the instructions given to him must be very easy to understand and follow (being a "Diebold Candidate" voter have it's limitations !)
Tough or impossible requirements ?
The recently discovered multi-boot capability can be tempting, but it leaves traces, and there is a need to open the voting machine to set the switches. There is also a risk that the incriminating software can be found if the flash based fraudulent boot loader does not erase/alter itself before audit/forensic examination. Also, the only practical way to alter it 'on demand' during the vote is to type some predefined key sequence, something not easily performed in a voting booth.
There is a 'better' way.
First, look at this picture:
http://www.openvotingfoundation.org/ts/slides/16-lwr.html
On the left, there is a component labeled "U30", this is an IrDA transceiver. The two holes in the casing prove it's intended to work at all times and not only as a debugging / testing device.
This transceiver looks like a 4 Mbps (fast IrDA) Agilent HSDL-3602 (very few have this 10 pins package).
Data sheet:http://www.avagotech.com/assets/downloadDocument.do?id=1564
On the hardware level, this is both an infrared transmitter and an infrared receiver. The signals it can transmit or receive are very similar to the signals sent over a regular serial port. In facts, most modern UARTS can be programmed to operate either as a wired RS232 interface or as a wireless, infrared interface.
IrDA itself refers to the (awfully complex) software protocol normally associated with the infrared wireless interface.
It's important to keep in mind that, just like a wired RS232 port, it can be used with a much simpler protocol and can be used in unidirectional mode (receive only, without transmitting anything).
It is logically placed near the 'keypad' connector that is also a RS232 serial port.
Data sheet:http://www.sipex.com/Files/DataSheets/SP3243.pdf
The IrDA controller can be seen here http://www.openvotingfoundation.org/ts/slides/10-bleft.html
It's the Hitachi HD64465BP whose press release is here http://www.hitachi.com/New/cnews/E/1998/981019B.html and clearly mentions that in contains an IrDA interface.
At the base of the software driver, just like for RS232 handling, there is a hardware triggered interrupt routine that responds to the arrival of new characters and stores them in a buffer until a condition occurs that transfers the buffer content to higher level software.
Any programming error that let the buffer overflow anywhere during the processing of the data can corrupt the return stack and lead to the buffer's content being executed as code. This is one of the most common vulnerability and even when great care is taken, nearly all computer systems that accept data generated from the outside are vulnerable, may they be Windows or Linux based or embedded systems.
Read the classic "Smashing the stack for fun and profit" http://reactor-core.org/stack-smashing.html for in depth information.
Maybe it could be renamed "Smashing the stack for fun, vote fraud and huge profits".
Once code execution is transferred to the loaded code, it have full, unlimited access to the system and can alter the machine's behavior or the data it stores (such as vote results) in any way the malicious author intended it to. In an embedded processor without sophisticated protections, this is even easier than on a Pentium class processor machine using a modern OS (Windows XP / Linux).
If the IrDA software contains such a flaw (or even more than one, call that redundant insecurity), it's nearly impossible to prove it was intentionally planted / left in the code.
The injected fraudulent code is only present in RAM, and can even remove itself and allow normal processing to resume once it have finished it's task, so it leaves no traces for further forensic analysis.
A modified infrared keyless car entry transmitter can be used to send the 'malformed' / too long data packets and, at 4Mbps, transmission time for a 40 Ko executable would be around 0.1 second.
the fraudulent operator would need to be placed on the side of the machine or in front of it if he uses reflection on the (usually white) side panel of the voting booth : http://www.qacelections.com/new_pa1.jpg
The transmitter can be used up to 3 to 4 feet away (or more if a high efficiency infrared LED is used) and can go through light clothing, allowing activation by clicking on the transmitter from inside a pant or shirt pocket.
Once all the voting machines have been 'beamed', a simple code, such as a long click could be used to erase the incriminating code and data in the IR transmitter processor (either in Flash or in RAM). Since normal operating frequencies for keyless transmitters are well below 4 Mbps, the fast transmission pattern could be easily hidden, modulating the normal pulses and thus preserving the normal, benign keyless entry function in case someone sees the key activation and becomes suspicious.
"beaming" can be done late in the voting process, and only in a few selected booth where exit poll interviews of voters shows that the "Diebold candidate" needs a little help from his friends ...
I have no proof it really happened, all I can say is that I can't see a single legitimate use for this IrDA port on a voting machine and, if I had to design the best electronic vote tampering system I can think of, that's exactly how I would do it.
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/9707/36345.html
Intraday chart not bad -
Positive candlestick signal on the hourly, money flow creeping up and accumulation showong.
http://chart.bigcharts.com/custom/ameritrade-com/big.chart?symb=GERN&startdate=7%2F9%2F2006&....
15 minute chart MACD is what I use for a buy signal, when the blue line comes up to meat the brown one. This also looks good. Note that it's identical to last Friday so far. Also stocks usually bounce after they break the bollinger, up or down.
Volume spike on lower says it could be capitulation.
I'm going to stick my neck out and agree, I think we will have a reversal today.
http://chart.bigcharts.com/custom/ameritrade-com/big.chart?symb=GERN&startdate=7%2F9%2F2006&....
Gee... It's nice to be able to post without waiting for someone to twist your words and come up with a smart ass remark :)
What amazes me is all of this whining about "self regulating" the stem cell money, and the fact that voting machine manufacturers can "self regulate" their operating systems doesn't rate a whisper.
Email to SI Dave
admin_dave@techstocks.com
There should be a button to join the board e-mail list at the bottom of the introductory page. If the introductory post is hidden I don't think you see one.
I'm no expert, but aren't malignacies harder to treat and more universal? If a medication can remove malignancy from the system it is "pan cancer", isn't it?
If you look at the introductory post, there is an e-mail list to subscribe to at the bottom.
You can also try totallysuite_dude@yahoo.com for an e-mail address and see if he gets it. Some people don't check it.
Yahoo addys are good for public display 'cause it screens out the junk mail pretty well and it's not very private.
Esammee - subscribe to the list and I'll connect you two. Totallysuite - do the same. It's better than posting an e-mail. Or you could use the Yahoo email addy if he watches it.
Can you PM me? If not I'll check my paulagem3 yahoo mail later.
One advantage of this board is the ability to delete specific posts without "banning" a poster completely. I take this moderator thing pretty seriously and I'm wondering how I would have treated captainoutrageous with his "going to 5" that seemed so unreasonable this spring. In retrospect, he was right, but I don't think that repeated posts saying "going to 5" over and over with no substantiation, no discussion, and gloating and taunting is appropriate either.
On this board I could delete any posts that were unsubstantiated and request that he give charts, reasoning, source of information (does he work for a hedge fund that is manipulating this stock?) etc. So if he really wanted his posts to stick he'd have to back them up. I see that as a real advantage on this board and it would have to be weighed against the ability to give "recs" on the other board.
Feedback welcome.
It is my desire to build a respectful community of investors here, not just a gabby trading board.
Love & Light to all
Paula
Thanks for the transcript esammee, another nice feature of this board is the "keep" button at the bottom so you can find a specific post for later reference. I marked this one.
I have a big project going for a few days so will check in but not necessarily post that much.
If anyone has time - I would also like some comments on what is going on with GTOP. It's another cancer vaccine and I don't quite understand all of the technical issues involved. I think understanding what's happening here could be helpful in following Geron.
Their Yahoo board is quite active, knowledgeable, and unencumbered:
http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Business_%26_Finance/Investments/Sectors/Healthcare/Biotechnology_...
The stock is 45% insty owned which is pretty high for such a new company.
Search feature on IHUB works well. Enter GTOP and select 'public messages' in the search box top right. Some relevant posts from IHUB -
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=12390045&txt2find=gtop+
It hit the SHO list yesterday -
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=12388667&txt2find=gtop+
And our buddy Dew is spouting negativity on this one too.
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=12385627&txt2find=gtop+
For clarity, if anyone wants to respond you can do so on the GTOP thread and just give folks here a heads up.
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/board.asp?board_id=6386
I think it is important for me to study this to broaden my market experience.
Thanks to all,
Paula
EMAIL THIS LINK TO FRIENDS-
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/6/15/01056/6968
and add add a couple of your favoite activists sites like blackboxvoting.org
or http://www.bradblog.com/?p=2954
or http://www.openvotingfoundation.org/index.html
Make sure folks know what is happening to their votes!!!
Ok, anyone want to try out Silicon Investor? Moderation of that board has been turned over to me as well and the Rec's feature is enabled.
Perhaps we should try that format for a while then vote on which one we like best.