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I guess everyone is taking your advice today!
I don't think it is Browning, I think it is Mark that is really holding this back. Shareholders need to vote Browning onto the board!!!!
Did Mark by chance mention if it was positive news or negative news? Also, has anyone been able to verify the true O/S through the T/A. No offense to Mark, but I don't much trust the guy.
Well, I guess that answers a couple of the disagreements on this board. The O/S count and whether Mark still has his hand in things.
I just left a message.
I'm not that familiar with the HTB designation. Do you know if each company has their own list, or is it a market wide list that everyone uses?
I don't know that it would matter much if we did it, but if Browning took his shares off the table for borrowing it might make a pretty big difference.
Time to buy and hold imo...
I just saw this on my Schwab account..could have been there all along, but just noticed it today..
Hard to Borrow Warning for EPCG-
Good Explanation from Jim Cramer
http://www.thestreet.com/story/862233/1/knowing-the-rules-of-the-shorting-game.html
You have to be able to borrow the stock first to be able to short it. You have to find out from your broker if the stock can be borrowed first.
That's a difficult process sometimes. First the stock you want to sell short must be located. A whole department in a brokerage house, the "Locate" department, tries to find the stock. Sometimes it is impossible to find because there are no shares around to borrow. This "hard-to-borrow" status occurs when stocks that have a very small float get ganged up on by a group of short-sellers.
Why else does a stock get hard to borrow? Often the owners of stock don't allow their stock to be used by short-sellers. They take their stock out of the borrowing box that each investment firm has. So for example, let's say you own National Gift Wrap.com and you are convinced the fundamentals are strong. But you think the shorts are leaning all over your stock, pressing it down.
You may be unwittingly aiding the shorts by allowing your National Gift Wrap.com shares to be let out to short-sellers. It will be lent out if you say nothing because you signed a "hypothecation" agreement when you opened your account, allowing them to lend it out. That's one of the great secrets of Wall Street. It happens automatically unless you say something.
If you take National Gift Wrap out of Street name, or request that it can't be borrowed by short-sellers, the brokers have to obey your wishes. Are you an unwitting abettor of the bears on National Gift? Ask yourself that question with any stock you are long.
When stocks get hard to borrow, sometimes the short-seller has to pay, literally pay cash, to find the stock he needs to stay short. He pays it as a percentage of the dollar amount that he sells short. People right now are paying as high as 15% of the proceeds to stay short on hard-to-borrow names.
What happens if you short a stock and the stock can't be borrowed? In other words, more stock is shorted than can be found because so much has been taken out of Street name and so little floats to begin with?
Ahh, now that's the biggest question. I have had it happen to me several times and it is quite frightening even for professionals. First, you get warned by your custody broker that you are "failing to deliver" stock. You complain, if you shorted legitimately, that you got a locate first. Your custody broker then tells you another Wall Street secret: It doesn't matter. If you have a locate and the stock has, in the interim, become hard to borrow, you are just plain out of luck. You have to scramble to find stock all over again, and if the broker can't find it, you probably won't be able to find it either.
The custody broker will then threaten to "buy in" your stock. These are the two most dangerous words in the lexicon of the short-seller. That means the broker will simply go into the open market and buy your stock back wherever he wants.
Yeah, I just hope it isn't the type of patience that has to last another year and a half. I first bought in shortly after I saw Browning buy in Aug 07.
On a disagreeable note, I think your article had more to do with insiders within management. Browning is different. He is only an insider by the number of shares he owns. In his case it doesn't mean he knows anything other than speculation like us. That is why I'd like to finally see him put on the Board of Directors. Then if he keeps buying we'll know for sure, maybe, that he has a plan.
Patience it is!
I guess there are advantages and disadvantages with that idea. Supposing Browning even knew about all the debt he would take the risk of tarnishing a good name by merging it with a bad name. I'm hoping more than anyone that this will be a good investment, but sometimes I still wonder how much he really knew/knows when he started with this plan, whatever that plan might be. The company has been pretty quiet ever since it sold its assets and supposedly started the VOIP services.
Speaking of which, does anyone know if you can actually order and pay for the VOIP services on their site? I think their site sucks, and the price is fairly expensive compared to other VOIP services.
Found this on iHub - pretty interesting reading about NIR Group. Sounds like a scandalous group of people.
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/board.aspx?board_id=11792&NextStart=254
Well it can't be much less than it is now. Doesn't get much lower.
There has been speculation that John was supposed to meet with Mark a few weeks ago, but not sure if anyone can verify whether it happened or not. I personally think Mark still has a hand in the company unfortunately, but hopefully we'll hear soon that John was able to make it on the board at least.
As far as the 400 million O/S ? Are we sure that some of the current O/S isn't already due to the debintures?
On Jan 11 2007 they reported 21,885,000 in outstanding shares.
On Jan 11 2008 they reported 228,774,164 outstanding shares.
The only one reporting buying anything between that period is John Browning, but that was on the open market. Otherwise debintures were given to the NIR group between May and July. There was also a lot of volume in that timeframe. Maybe they already converted a good portion thinking at the time the price wouldn't get much lower.
Of course I'm not the best at this game so take it for what it is worth.
I would think John has a lot to lose if he is really just scamin with this one. Hope not anyway. At least on the bright side this doesn't have far to go to hit bottom like the blue chip stocks.
He sure has an active business oriented family. At least I am assuming they are all family.
I guess that means the O/S count is a little off...eom
I've never heard of it, so I'm sure this is a dumb question, but is there any site which tries to or can actually track the total number of shares owned by all shareholders. Do the individual companies get reports showing current shareholders and basic information from somewhere? Just curious, sounds like a good business idea if it were possible.
You'd think speculation alone would send it up a little more than it is, even if revenues wouldn't support it. I have over 10.
Yeah, but you don't just walk in off the street and say I own you now do what I say without going through the SEC. Besides, what board do they even have? Mark is the last CEO, and without a current one, who else are you going to talk to? Of course that could be the other problem why we haven't seen a change in John's status to CEO or member of the board because there is no real leadership running the company anymore. All imo.
John was supposed to meet with Mark this last week. Not sure if it ever happened.
Hopefully we have two different definitions for the word disgusting!!
Are there only two top shareholders that show for the top ten kdswing? It's amazing that this company still even exists with all the news we hear about Mark doing other things, but with only 2% give or take of the shares I don't think he has any future plans that include anything big with EPCG. Hopefully John has a plan.
Well, at least I knew of one of the indicators, the MACD, but had no clue about the others you mentioned so thanks for taking the time to explain. I will definitely give it a shot.
Thank you, very helpful. I've been resistant to learning new indicators just becasue there are so many to choose from, but those sound interesting so I'll take a closer look and start to learn some more.
I'm not familiar with that indicator, can you explain more of what it means?
Does anyone know if John ever met with Mark? Also, we have been suspecting that John has still been buying over the past week...but nobody has seen any additional Form 4's have they?
Is there any sign since 2007 that they have been trying to do any of those things..(ie mergers, joint acquisitions, etc.)?
IMO there is only one direction this stock can go at this point. The only questions would be how high and how long til it gets there.
I don't necessarily agree with the reverse merger. It wouldn't be good for his company because of the past history of EPCG, but at the same time I don't know that much about reverse mergers. What I believe and hope to happen is that he will help diversify the interests of EPCG, maybe into the oil industry somehow using prior experience in the field, and help generate revenue for a change. All IMO of course!
Nice run up today. I don't believe the meeting between John and Mark took place either. Have to wait until next week and see if anything comes out. That's fine I guess, gives me time to pick up some more.
Yep, sorry, wasn't trying to trump your post..just adding my two cents for extra DD.
Actually, his first massive buy, though not as massive as last Oct, was in Aug 2007 when he bought around 30 mil. I found this stock about 2 weeks after and just bought on pure speculation that the guy had a clue something was gonna happen. Nothing happened obviously until Oct 2008 when he started his current accumulation to reach up to almost 200m shares. Yeah I'm pretty excited! Hoping for news!
good day...will be even better if it was an insider that bought some today, especially if they had their meeting today like the rumor has gone.
I had buys in at Schwab for .0001, .0002, .0003, and .0004 and none would take today. Guess I have to stop being cheap with this sucker before it explodes, if it ever explodes. Speaking of the reverse merger...he won't do it if the company still has a lot of bad debt, and unforunately the company hasn't said a thing in quite some time so anything is possible. If the meeting takes place tomorrow this could go one way or the other IMO if the company will make any kind of announcement that is. I'd at least like to see Browning listed as a Director. I think in the short term that would be the best news we could hear tomorrow.
At roughly 175 million shares, the outstanding share count must be over 400 million if Browning is not a major shareholder
I've been wrong before, but I believe you are only required to file after you have bought or sold and not before. Good question on how to know whether he really owns as many as he reports. I've never really thought about how all that is tracked publicly if at all.
Okay..thanks for encouraging extra homework. I always hated homework anyway. This cleared it up for me better than the other sites I had looked at...
"The total number of shares "issued" to persons by a corporation cannot exceed the number of shares "authorized" by the articles of incorporation. "Authorized" shares refers to the total number of shares that can be sold("issued"), either upon formation or at a later time. With the number of authorized shares being the maximum, you should decide how many shares to issue to each stockholder. The number of shares issued need only be large enough to be able to reflect the desired percentage ownership of the owners. In other words, it is typical not to issue all of the authorized shares.
"For example, if Bob and Ted intend to own the entire corporation in a 60-40 ratio, respectively, the corporation may have authorized a total of 1,000 shares, but may decide to issue only 100 shares, 60 to Bob and 40 to Ted. As long as the other 900 shares are retained by the corporation, Bob and Ted own their desired percentages of the corporation because they own all of the issued stock. "
Sorry about the mistake...all is good still.
Finally did some more homework on the percentage ownership question asked some time back, and according to what I have been able to find online it sounds like you have to go by authorized shares for percentage ownership. That is why sometimes companies will keep over 50% of their authorized shares locked in the treasury so to speak in order to avoid a hostile takeover. Someone correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn't that mean that Mr Browning would need over 500,000,000 shares in order to gain 50% control? Thats supposing the true A/S value is 1 Billion shares.
The data I see is pretty limited on todays transactions. I see almost 33mil in vol but what was the price? .0001? Was it buy or sell?
Re: Percentage needed for ownership - to the best of my understanding it is 51% of Outstanding shares that would give you the majority control.
Did anyone ever respond to the request by Mr. Browning for support? I kept putting it off, but just noticed he had deleted the post...does that mean he doesn't need help anymore?