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Here's your Hummer, Matt
A client of mine did this paint job. It's Dennis Rodmans. I had to drive it to the shop. People hate him so much they were throwing things at me. Windows are tinted. They couldn't see who was driving. The thing is wide and tough to keep in a lane. You are also very separated from person in the seat next to you. Scroll down a tiny bit.
http://www.almartinezpaint.com/cars.htm
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Just say NO to stock fraud!
It is my opinion
that is what these boards are all about. Heck, if fred can try and blame me for the price going down, he would LOVE to blame evwaps lack of performance on the tragedy. If you go read chuchju's post on RB about his phone call to fred this morning, he is basically blaming lack of any evwap volume on the tragedy.
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=ASTN&read=21681
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=ASTN&read=21682
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eVWAP volume is ZERO
and probably will be for some time, perhaps weeks as one called noted on Yahoo. Bankruptcy time. Anyone have any predictions for the filing date?
Fred was looking for an exit strategy and something/someone to blame. Now he gets to use the tragedy.
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Just say NO to stock fraud!
.32 new all time low
perhaps they have started to access the toxic funds.
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Just say NO to stock fraud!
I made a red, white and blue awareness ribbon
I had to hand paint it so the quality is not too hot. Hey, it's the thought that counts. I didn't even put it in one of my own sites.
http://members.aol.com/mmmaryinla/images/redribbon.jpg
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evwap as per exchange is ZERO
there's a toll free number. Call them up yourself sara.
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I post honest information
you don't. That's the big difference. You mislead and lie to people. You post that npct is a great deal when it most certainly isnt'. It's looking more like a stock scam every day. NO profits, just patent applications, toxic funding, ceo was sued for fraud by the sec, ceo sued for rackateering, his last company went bankrupt, he was involved in gold mining companies...
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you own no npct yet hype it?
now that really makes no sense at all. What's the deal there? holding company? hyping partner? he gets paid to hype npct, you get paid to hype ifta, then you just do each other's work so there's no liability or something? were you compensated to hype it?
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Just say NO to stock fraud!
some site suggestions
http://www.insidewallstreet.com/ just a top banner image with some basic java site buttons. Yes, I know this is a tout site.
http://www.siliconinvestor.com/ just a top banner image with some basic image buttons
http://www.fool.com has a little too much going on but basic layout is good. They are more than just message boards.
http://www.cnbc.com/ has a little too much going on but basic layout is good. They are more than just message boards.
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Just say NO to stock fraud!
Agreed matt
you are a numbers person. Maybe a few of us can come up with something that is super fast loading yet professional and business like. Your start page looks like a site map, super functional yet not too appealing. Sorry
I will post some sites that are fast loading and look great to give you some ideas. Let us know if you need someone to do a little photoshopping for you.
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is joemoney for real?
I know I've seen him around for a while hyping IFTA and NPCT, two dog stocks. I only posted the news article about the 200:1 reverse split on IFTA and he's hated me ever since, called me a basher. I didn't even post my opinion.
If I hadn't seen him around for a while, I would have to believe that he's not real and is making these insane posts just to intentionally disgust us, like a troll.
Joe, do you really believe the stuff you are saying or are you just trying to ruffle everyone's feathers here, rile us up?
After reading your posts and your hyping techniques, you are not a smart guy at all. Heck, you're deep into npct during toxic financing and you're deep into ifta during the reverse split and toxic financing. Are you a shorter mascarading as a hypester? or just a lousy hypester?
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joemoney, what about npct?
you seem to be hyping that stock in your site. For the rest of you npct is so pathetic that they actually release press releases about hiring new stock promoters. Check itout. Their ceo was sued by the SEC for fraud and he was also sued for racketeering. His last company went bankrupt besides the fact he goes from mining companies to nanochip company. The company has NOOOO revenue. They just have some patent applications that the touts are hyping. They just did some toxic convertible financing and then sued Kernaghan for shorting their stock when the ceo signed a contract that said he could short them. This is the type of companies joemoney hypes. I personally believe he is the lowest of the lowest of hypesters. He most certainly is unamerican.
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the spam guy still on yahoo
posting using patriotic names trying to cause fear and send traffic to his site
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You are really low joe
I bet if you were in NY, you'd be going through the dead people's pockets stealing all their pennies.
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Free Real Time FRTIE.OB is bankrupt
Perhaps they can't afford the bandwidth? They are still operational. Maybe they have a pay site ready to go, the notsoFreeRealTime?
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News or noise
Re: May/June 2001 - Financial Analysts Journal: News or Noise? Internet Postings and Stock Prices
[abstract]
News or Noise? Internet Postings and Stock Prices
Robert Tumarkin and Robert F. Whitelaw
The anecdotal evidence is growing that postings in Internet financial forums affect stock prices, either because the postings contain new information or because they represent successful attempts to manipulate stock prices. From an investment perspective, knowing whether this phenomenon is pervasive is important. We examined the relationship between Internet message board activity and abnormal stock returns and trading volume in the period from mid-April 1999 to mid-February 2000. Our study focused on the RagingBull.com discussion forum, an extremely popular site whose format permits the construction of an objective measure of investor opinions. For stocks in the Internet service sector, we found that on days with abnormally high message activity, changes in investor opinion correlated with abnormal industry-adjusted returns. These event days also coincided with abnormally high trading volume, which persisted for a second day. However, we found that message board activity did not predict industry-adjusted returns or abnormal trading volume, which is consistent with market efficiency.
http://www.aimrpubs.org/faj/issues/v57n3/abs/f0570041a.html
Full article available at (subscription required):
http://www.aimrpubs.org/faj/issues/v57n3/full/f0570041a.html
So when CEO's sue message board posters, they are really doing it for no reason at all
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Blood donation center and hotline overloaded in LA
I will keep trying.
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joelong: you're on every single other board
why not SI? Is it because it's the only one that charges? You don't want a credit card number hooked up to your user name as you tout such stocks as umcc, tmot, aree... ?
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joelong: umcc, profits, profits!
when they were bankrupt and had almost closed the doors. He snookered one old man by pretending to be his friend, "bashers are the enemy" "buy more at every dip"...and that guy lost all his retirement money. People who do things like that go straight to hell. Hearing that man crying on the phone to me telling me what joelong here told him in email was just sickening.
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I don't like touts, very true
I saw so many like westergaard, cce and quite a few here swindle so many investors. I'd mention your names but then matt would say "personal attack." I would tell the investors "this is just another fake run up" and go through the numbers and they so wanted to believe it was real that they'd buy anyway and lose it all.
I can honestly say that I have never seen an honest stock promoter. If he were honest, I doubt he'd be needed or wanted to promote the stock. If he just gave the investors info., he'd just by an IR person.
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stock promoters arrested
they did a real bad stock scam. They posted about ficticeous trips to the company shareholder meeting and offices. The offices didn't exist. The meeting never took place. They posted it on a message board. They made millions. Unless the shareholder meeting is on the company website on video, I don't believe what someone says on a message board.
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message board comprehension level
They say they intentionally write the LA Times to be at the fifth grade reading and retention level. I bet stock message boards are at the second grade level at best. I'm being serious here. Either that or people are itnentionally trying to whine about the semantics of my posts because they dislike me personally and can't whine aobut the heart of my posts without looking like fools. This doesn't happen on RB, SI or even yahoo recently. Only a few people do this, sara, joelong and bop. They have personal issues with me. They also only do it here because they are ridiculed elsewhere for this same behavior. Sara and joe don't post on yahoo because people laugh at them there. They can't afford SI so they don't do it there either. They get laughed at on RB also. Why do they do it here?
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Reading in your own meaning, seeing my meaning
two different things. If you don't like me, you are biased toward reading in your own meaning just so you can throw it back at me.
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white hat?
does that mean "good" guy (gal?) depending upon your bias?
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you may be in a corner squashing something
but it sure as heck isn't me you're squashing.
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me? causing trouble?
I'm just posting. You guys are the ones responding causing trouble. You guys started the semantics war about "all" and "some" modifiers. Of course I will respond in kind about "lying" and "unbiased." Everyone, please refer to webster dictionary...and common sense.
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Just say NO to stock fraud!
intentionally misrepresent:
playing up the positives and playing down the negatives is intentionallly misrepresenting.
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he said, she said
big deal. I can link to a post of a post by an anonymous person stating that the world is flat. It does not make the world flat.
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yes, message over messenger
content of posts over semantics
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you are biased
"A bias to me is believing in something although there is evidence that that belief is in error."
that is what bias means to YOU. You are the one who sees the "evidence" that the "belief" is in "error." One person sees a message board iwth a lot of negative posts. He sees that "evidence" to mean that the stock is not a good investment. Another guy sees all the negative posts and thinks it's "evidence" that the stock IS a good investment because we all know that "bashers never bash a bad stock." To each his/her/it own.
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semantics
if there is nothing that is impossible, why does the word exist?
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we're all biased
that's why we're all here posting our differing opinions about public companies. If we werent' biased, we'd all be posting the same thing. I think one's a buy, you think it's a sell, someone else thinks it's a momo play, another thinks it'd make a good short. We are all entitled to our own biased personal opinions. That I'm unbiasedly sure of
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you are not unbiased
none of us are unbiased. It's impossible as we're human beings. If you were unbiased, you would have approached this debate different. My biased personal opinion, just like everyone else's here.
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Just say NO to stock fraud!
none of us are unbiased
it's impossible. we are humans.
to lie unintentionally is still lying, as per webster
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Just say NO to stock fraud!
perhaps we are all liars
or just people posting our own opinions
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I have a feeling that nowadays ceo's know how bad these deals are. They just go ahead with them anyway. ASTN ceo knows how bad this deal is yet he's going ahead with it. Desperate companies doing desperate things. They know it will only keep the company alive a little while more. That's okay. A few more paychecks for them and an extremely slim chance for the company.
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Just say NO to stock fraud!
As per webster
misleading is lying. Go sue webster.
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"started by" user name
is that really needed on stock boards? If they have no powers, what is the point of having anyone's name up there? Why not just have no name up there and just the company profile from multex or something.
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Just say NO to stock fraud!
A Deal With the Devil
By James J. Cramer
Originally posted at 8:50 AM ET 8/23/00 on
RealMoney.com
What if I told you there were a $4 stock out there in the rapidly
growing telecommunications industry that has roughly a $2 cash
value? What if I told you the company is growing by leaps and
bounds and provides advanced telco services to 45,000
customers, up 50% from six months ago? What if I told you
"Inside Wall Street," the BusinessWeek column, hyped this
thing at 25 a year ago and everything it said came true, except
the stock price plummeted anyway? And what if I told you that
Nortel (NT:NYSE - news) has a big investment in the company
and Robert Annunziata, former CEO of Global Crossing and
Teleport, two wildly successful companies, just joined the board?
Ah hah, but before you go buy Log On America (LOAX:Nasdaq
- news) this morning, what if I told you that it had issued a toxic
convert at 17 six months ago? Would you still be tempted?
Maybe you shouldn't be.
Log On America is one of those companies that should have
known better. I don't know how many times I have urged CEOs
in this column that they should not issue so-called floorless
convertibles because they will lose everything to their investors. I
have beaten myself up endlessly for failing to stop Hayes, a
now-bankrupt company, from issuing a toxic convert. At the time,
Hayes was one of my firm's largest positions, having gotten it as
part of a sale of Penril Datability's high-speed modem business
to Bay Networks (now Nortel).
I argued vociferously with the CEO of Hayes -- who shall go
nameless because, in the end, I am a better guy than he is --
not to do this trade. I predicted that the preferred holders would
short the common stock into oblivion as a risk-free trade, which
they did. I said it would put the company into bankruptcy faster
than a speeding bullet.
The preferred guys drove the stock down to zero and the
company filed for Chapter 11 protection. We lost everything. So I
have made it my mission since to shout it from the rooftops:
Don't do these kinds of deals, even if you think they will save
your company. They won't.
Log On America didn't listen. It took money from a couple of
savvy convertible preferred guys and the company now alleges
that toxic issuers systematically drove the stock down from 17 to
2 by selling short the common, knowing they had a risk-free short
because the lower the stock went the more shares that would be
issued against the convert.
It got shafted.
Now the only hope for this company, as I see it, is the suit it just
filed in Federal Court. And given the slow nature of the courts,
that may not be enough to save this company from oblivion.
I hope not. These folks seem like honest guys. Not very smart
about financing, but honest guys.
I don't want them to fail. That's probably now up to a judge
because these convertible preferred guys are smarter than
Shylock ever was. And nowhere near as visible, or as
sympathetic!
What I want you to do is avoid companies who make these deals
so you won't have a Hayes, which ruined my 1998, or a Log On
America, which, I am sure has ruined everybody's year who has
bought this otherwise high-growth CLEC company.
So I want to give you the details of what has happened to Log
On, and what occurred to Efax.com, Netplex Group, Auspex
Systems, MicroStrategy, General Magic, Intraware, Etoys
and Entrade, according to the plaintiff's document.
In February of this year, Log On entered into a deal with a
couple of firms to raise money through a convertible preferred
according to a "floating" conversion rate that was meant to offer
some downside protection to the holders. Thus the lower the
stock at the time of conversion, the greater number of common
shares to be received by the holders. (Hence , the floorless
nomenclature.)
What is so awful about that? For one, a floorless convertible
presents, as the brief from the Log On suit says, "a tempting
opportunity for market manipulation." To use the formula
provided:
[The holder of the security] can short sell the
company's stock at a price of "X" per share. A
high volume of short selling pushes the share
price down to X-1 or even X-2. The preferred
shareholder's conversion price is then reset to
a discounted percentage of X-2. The preferred
shareholder then converts at that lower
conversion price to cover the shares it sold at
X, delivers the shares necessary to cover the
short sales and has a large number of shares
left over, which it can then sell at X-2. ...
Further, the more the preferred shareholder
can push down the market price, the more
profit it makes on each conversion. If the
preferred shareholder short sells at X per
share, it will make much more if it can convert
its shares to cover at X-4, then it will make by
covering at X-2. Thus the more the preferred
shareholder can drive the market price down,
the more money it will make per share and the
more shares it will receive.
Hence the term "toxic," or the more colorful "death spiral
convertible." The lower the stock gets driven the more in the
driver's seat the convert holders are. In Log Onýs case they have
hijacked the whole car! Log On alleges in its brief that the
convert holders have driven the stock down so far through
massive short sales that they would now own 8,000,000 shares
as every peg down entitled them to more and more shares. How
much is 8 million shares? Heck, there are only 8,800,000 shares
outstanding!!! Management only owns 3 million shares.
Game over! Toxic convert holders 1, everybody else, zilch-mo!!
Isn't that an incredible story?
Of course maybe the holders didn't short it all the way down or
knock it down. For example, we know the telco market has
gotten tough. And maybe the business has gotten soft because
of the Verizon strike or because Verizon has lowered the price
of DSL. Who knows? But the simple fact of the matter is that this
company was relatively healthy before it took this suicidal
financing. Now it is on intensive care with a judge trying to figure
out whether the stock should be resuscitated. Don't let this
happen to one of your equities. If you own a stock with a
convertible preferred and it is floorless, you could soon be in this
position. Sell it now if you do, because it is a cinch that it will go
still lower if the ploy is still on.
What happened to Log On shouldn't be allowed to happen. But
it has happened. It may be too late to save it. Until chief financial
officers of the world wise up, we will keep having these toxic
converts. The bankers don't seem to want to stop them. The
issuers surely won't. And the government doesn't even seem to
know they exist.
What a crime! Hopefully for the last time: CFOs say "no" to death
spiral converts. They will kill your company more quickly than any
other former of financing. Better to just give up and sell the
company than to take one of these on. Don't say I didn't warn
you.
James J. Cramer is manager of a hedge fund and co-founder of
TheStreet.com. At time of publication, his fund was long Nortel.
His fund often buys and sells securities that are the subject of
his columns, both before and after the columns are published,
and the positions that his fund takes may change at any time.
Under no circumstances does the information in this column
represent a recommendation to buy or sell stocks. Cramer's
writings provide insights into the dynamics of money
management and are not a solicitation for transactions. While
he cannot provide investment advice or recommendations, he
invites you to send comments on his column to James J.
Cramer .
Send letters to the editor to letters@thestreet.com.
Read our conflicts and disclosure policy.
Order reprints of TSC articles.
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Just say NO to stock fraud!
playing up positives and playing down negatives
is misleading. As per webster misleading is lying.
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Just say NO to stock fraud!