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Very interesting-appreciate you posting that...
It sounds like a good deal to me too. Dilutive, but much better than a secondary as funds can be raised as needed and Marker stays in control. Hopefully eases some of the uncertainty about financing...
Short interest up about 200,000 shares to 6,935,813 shares as of 2/14/20.
Whalewisdom has net institutional ownership slightly up last quarter even with them selling their shares. I may have bought some of them. I still have a good feeling about this stock-I hope they will really regret selling by this time next year. I mean REALLY, REALLY regret selling, if you know what I mean...
That is some really good information. I, for one, thank you for posting it...
I would like to see some more insider buys at these prices...
I agree with you and I am putting my money where my mouth is, adding once again. If I was a buyer at $8, why not at $2.76? I believe shorts covering yesterday and today, which is a good thing...
Very interesting, thanks for that link. The priority voucher really is rare-chart shows only 32 have been given since the program started in 2007.
I can see why some (ok, most) are disappointed with CC and recent events. I am too, but do not see the news as all that terrible. Hopefully, just a bit of a technical issue with the hold that will be resolved any day now, as the FDA clock started ticking on Halloween. My two positive takeaways regarding this are that the “agency had no concerns with the design of the AML trial” and that the “agency has noted the safety profile of the overall therapy”.
TPIV trial being stopped is also disappointing but understandable. The worst thing you can do is keep wasting money on something that does not have a future. TPIV trials were always icing on the cake, IMO. MultiTAA is the holy grail here.
As to why the hold was not announced sooner, I can only speculate. Perhaps, like me, they felt that this is a relatively minor issue that could possibly be resolved before the CC? We may never know.
I expect the share price the take a hit today. My hope is that it is accompanied by quite a bit of short covering. I am more concerned about the short number than the science or perceived management mistakes. Short squeezes are rare these days, and the sooner shorts cover, the better I will feel about things. Hang in there, longs...
Excellent. Thanks for posting....
Volume precedes price, hopefully...
I appreciate you taking the time to share this. It is easy to forget (for me, at least) that there are real people like yourself in these clinical trials that have so much more riding on the outcome than just money. I hope that you stay in remission and wish you nothing but the best....
Warning: I just bought some more shares. Usually when I do this the share price drops....
Market cap a measly $200 million now. I told myself I was not going to buy any more, but I do not know if I can resist. Potential has not changed, just the share price. Another CR in the pancreatic trial would be sweet right now....
Ha! I’m sure all the people who believe that stocks sometimes get manipulated are quaking in their boots!
It would also be nice if people on the message board did not ridicule and bully people they did not agree with.
I just checked the short interest on 15 biotech stocks. 13 out of 15 just recorded their largest short interest numbers for the last year on this recent reporting period. Not sure what to make of that, but feel a little more reassured that at least Marker is not being singled out.
To be honest, I’m sick of it, too. I was just trying to respond to his questions. I’ll not speak of it again...
Except everyone else is not calling me out on it and teasing me about it. Just you....
Hello once again, hanscott.
Thank you for taking the time to respond. You are an intelligent person-I can tell by your writing. Which makes it all the more interesting to me why you refuse to acknowledge the potential manipulation scenario.
Here is a question for you. Do you think it is normal for a stock to drop 50% on good pancreatic trial data being released? I would argue that manipulation is a more plausible explanation than a normal market reaction.
Another question. Why does the concept that this stock has been manipulated bother you so much? Do you feel threatened? Does it upset the rosy picture you have of an orderly market where everything is determined by simple supply and demand? Perhaps I am a bit more cynical. Where there is money to be made, there will be people trying to exploit any angle they can find.
Why does it bother you what I believe? You have a strong urge to try to correct me. I have already stated multiple times that I am guessing. On the contrary, your opinion seems absolute. No guessing for you. Have you taken a step back and considered that you may be wrong? I would venture to say that if you polled the people on this message board, 75% would agree that shorts had a large part in the price being what is is today. That does not make us right. But if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck...
It is only a prejudice if it is not happening.
The good news is that, in the end, it does not really matter which of us is right and which of us is wrong. Same team with differing opinions. Marker wins we both win...
Yes, phosphate binder with black box FDA warning about increase in iron in the blood. Ironically (pun intended), that was one of the positives that was supposed to make it a superior phosphate binder-the ability to reduce IV iron.
Hello hanscott,
I will try to humor you, though it is probably a waste of time. You probably will not change your mind, and I am probably not going to change mine. You feel shorts have nothing to do with the price getting nearly cut in half, and I feel it has everything to do with it. Perhaps the truth is somewhere in the middle. We may never know who is right, and personally, I could care less.
You mention that the only numbers we have to go by are short interest numbers, which were going up along with the price, but fell along with the price. A broad generality. And without looking at the numbers, I doubt they fell by much. Some shorts covered, of course. The ones with large positions were most likely unable to close out their entire short position-to cover would have brought the price back up. Can you imagine if they tried to cover a million share short position all at once? I believe they cover gradually, and likely have been covering slowly in the days since the drop. All computer generated-short, cover, short cover, keep the price low if they can.
You mention shares available to short were limited. Are you going by Fidelity’s borrow rate? That is just Fidelity for the retail investor. The institutions are not going through Fidelity. In theory, the entire tradable float could be shorted. Market makers also allow naked shorting all the time. Some shorted shared are never even borrowed-they just issue a fail to deliver. In this case, the market makers probably never blinked, knowing that some shorts were covering and they could easily come up with shares to accommodate the newly shorted shares.
Ok, manipulation is illegal. I stand corrected on that one, but having the SEC actually proving and prosecuting it is another story, and institutions know this.
Of course, institutional holders of this stock are not happy to see one of their stocks shorted heavily. But what can they do? Buy more, perhaps, taking advantage of the low price, which is what I have been doing. The one thing they don’t seem to do is freak out and sell, like a lot of retail investor’s do. I think it is simply accepted as business as usual on Wall Street.
Look, I do not care if you are not convinced or think I am wrong. And I said, it was all a guess. I could be wrong. But from being invested in biotech for a while now, I really do believe that manipulation of small cap biotech goes on quite frequently. The great thing about America is that you can think what you want. Good luck to you...
Seems that a few here on the message board are a bit prickly-understandable considering where the share price sits. Yes, there may be newcomers to biotech investing here and others who cannot believe that they may be wrong. IMO, if you are not against the company (short) then you are welcome and needed.
People are giving their opinions, so I will also chime in. I have been investing almost exclusively in biotech for the last 8-10 years. Currently have 8 holdings. Finance degree. Still work but do what research I can, spending about 15-20 hours a week keeping up with things concerning biotech. I have had winners, losers, and some that do nothing. I am good at picking a company and not so good at selling when I should.
I believe that these small cap biotechs are sometimes manipulated. Certainly not by brokerages like Fidelity, but by the institutions that have billions of dollars and desire to make more. Shorting the share price into the ground is one way to do it. Small cap biotechs are easy fodder. They do not have any earnings and therefore must issue shares to dilute. Trials often fail. Timeline for catalysts is known, for the most part. CEOs often inexperienced. Retail investors often inexperienced and easily influenced.
Here is my guess as to what has happened with Marker. And it is a guess. Some institution’s research staff came up with Marker because it met their criteria to short. Nothing personal. The right market cap, the correct range in shares outstanding, timeline to trial readouts, etc. So they (and possibly others) decided to short it. This is not the only company they are shorting. They are very experienced at doing this. I do not think that they were expecting the pancreatic data results. And those results actually did not come out of the blue-CEO hinted at good results to be reported at a later date. That should have and did move the share price up. I think that institutional shorts continued shorting during this time to keep the price somewhat in check. Results leaked a bit prematurely that Friday morning, upsetting Marker’s game plan a bit. Institutional short shorted heavily after that blunder, in order to start the share price moving downward once the market opened (share price actually was up nicely in pre-market trading on perceived good news). Some investors saw the price heading down and sold, stop losses were hit triggering more selling. Any upward momentum in share price greeted with more shorting to keep price down. Margin calls soon coming in creating more selling. A perfect execution by the shorts. Nothing illegal, just immoral. Unless there was a bit of naked shorting, which would not surprise me.
To be honest, I was not surprised by the drop in price, but was somewhat dismayed by how far it did drop. Somewhat expected with the size of the short position leading up to those results. I was kind of surprised that there was no “hit piece” written and published to correspond with the takedown. They used to be common, but seem a bit rarer these days. In any case, the hit piece was not needed. Some say another CR would have proved efficacy, but honestly, I think that this was preordained to go down, no matter what the data indicated. I had one company I was invested in drop 30% the same day FDA approval for their drug was announced.
I will be glad to see shorts covering. It seems short squeezes are very rare these days. Shorts are well researched and have nearly unlimited resources. I would love to see uptick rule reinstated and require institutions to file their short positions along with the required long positions every quarter. Probably not going to happen any time soon.
This is all my opinion. I could be completely wrong about Marker, but I have been in biotech too long to believe that these small companies are not manipulated. And not only downward, but pumped to increase share price as well. Which is just as bad, IMO.
So good luck to everybody. I believe the science is sound here. I am encouraged by the latest hires-I have found that management is as important as the science. Marker is by far my largest position-I have been selling off other biotechs to buy more here at these prices. If I am wrong, it is definitely going to sting.
It gets old. The dog days of summer where there is little volume, combined with a masterful job by the shorts, along with the complete market looking very ugly, has many shareholders a bit spooked. Myself included. I fight it by buying more. I think we will get some relief in Sept and October as everybody is done with vacations and volume picks up. Of course, I have been mostly wrong so far. Glad the story is not over yet....
An excellent hire. Also impressed with the addition of Steven Elms from Aisling Capital to the board. Very experienced in acquisitions. From his bio, it appears he has previously served on the board of 18 companies. Of those, 7 have been acquired. Pretty good odds. I appreciate that his interests are closely aligned with the common shareholder-he wants to make the most of his company’s investment.
It was and is. I got some $4.30s the other day-today picked up some more at 5.37. Way overweight here, but still accumulating. This price is a gift. I may pick up some more tomorrow. I feel very strongly that MRKR is going to be much higher in the not too distant future. Of course, I have been wrong before...
He has served on a lot of boards of companies that were bought out:
Mr. Elms currently serves as a director of ADMA Biologics, Ajax Health II and Zosano Pharma, and as a board observer of Marker Therapeutics and Verona Pharma. His prior board service includes Adams Respiratory Therapeutics, Advion BioSciences, Ambit Biosciences (acquired by Daiichi-Sankyo), Archimica Cooperatief (acquired by Euticals), Avera Pharmaceuticals, Bioenvision (acquired by Genzyme), CeNeRx BioPharma, Cidara Therapeutics, EarLens, LENSAR, Loxo Oncology (acquired by Eli Lilly), MAP Pharmaceuticals, NextWave Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Pfizer), Novazyme Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Genzyme), Oculex Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Allergan), Pernix Therapeutics, Scerene Healthcare and TRIA Beauty. He also serves on the INVO Board at Northwestern University.
Mr. Elms received his M.B.A. from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and his B.A. in Human Biology from Stanford University.
That is a lot of shares. A ten bagger from here, which I think is possible if things go well, gets you close to a million $. Not too shabby....
Seems like every time I add, it drops another dollar. If it does it today, we’ll know it is me...
Well, just added a few hundred more shares this morning. I’ve got way more shares than I comfortable with, but it is hard to not add at this price with all the company has going for it. Hope that the carnage is over-it has been rough. I know it is not a loss until you sell, don’t worry about the day to day price action, turn off the computer and check back in six months, nothing has changed with the science, and all the other advice meant to make me feel better, but it has still been rough.
Short message, fo sure. Maybe they pay by the word? Would be interesting to know how often a drug get approved when the DSMB offers this advice to continue without modification partway through the trial...
Most excellent- “Continue the study without modification.”
Unbelievable, this share price. I was fully loaded going into pancreatic data, then added (way too early, as it turns out) that day when it dropped. I am adding again tomorrow as well. Even if pancreatic data does not hold up (and I think it will) MRKR has other irons in the fire. Market cap is absurdly low.
I agree with you...
I am not torturing myself, and I am not talking about your average retail short. I am talking about an institution who decides to manipulate a small biotech into the ground and does not care how they do it or who gets hurt. I think it is immoral-you can think what you want. I also wish institutions would be required by law to report their short positions every quarter. They have to report their long positions why not their short positions?
It IS sad how these companies get manipulated. What people will do for money is disgusting. Of course, I too am invested here for the potential gains, but I am also pulling for the company to cure cancer to benefit mankind. I cannot imagine hoping for a company that is trying to help rid the world of cancer to fail, and then devoting huge resources to make it happen, all for the mighty dollar. It really is detrimental to a small biotech. It makes it more difficult to raise money, attract new investors, and ultimately save lives. And nobody really seems to care. A few years ago, I wrote the SEC and my Congressman after a company I was invested in was viciously bashed and shorted into the ground-it lost 30% on the day their drug was approved. I got form letters back from both of them. The whole financial system sleazy and corrupt, IMO. Enough of my ranting. I hope this thing goes to $200 and bankrupts some shorts...
I appreciate you and JCNJ not loaning our your shares to the shorts. It disgusts me how they are able to run this into the ground with no repercussions. If everybody had a backbone like you two the world would be a better place...
That is a nice point. Not only add antigens, but increase the dose strength, and give more monthly doses, lengthening the treatment time. Possibly start the doses closer to the end of chemo. Put all these together and the result may be truly outstanding.
I am hoping there is quite a bit of short covering. Sure is a nasty sell-off. Looking at how much the price has dropped, you would think that the drug causes pancreatic cancer instead of curing it. I’m buying more-the only way I know how to make myself feel better...
Here are a few highlights from presentation for me so far:
Mr. Hoang says he is very excited, and Multi-TAA has potential to become 1St line SOC.
In Arm A, 6 of 8 patients had tumor shrinkage. One patient who progressed during chemo, reversed on Multi-TAA.
CR quite uncommon-1 in several hundred with current SOC.
Tolerability excellent-more doses (currently 6) may achieve even better response. Also dosage can be increased.
More to come...