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Government websites on trials are frequently not updated promptly so that is how I would explain that. I am simply pointing out the possibility that the screening halt has been lifted and yet NWBO has found it expedient not to tell us. This scenario is unlikely but is worth considering.
I'll raise you one: Do we really know that the screening halt is still in place?
Maybe the screening halt has already been lifted and NWBO management, for reasons of its own, has decided not to tell us.
Have you publicly come out against NWBO? And if not, why not?
As an analyst, Mr. Giordino has done a better job of predicting than you're giving him credit for.
I'm not mistaken, Pyrr, started dumping on NWBO well before our share price started it's nearly uninterrupted free fall last autumn. Correct me if I'm wrong on that.
I still have issues with the fact that he refuses to change course in his public persona as an analyst and that makes me suspicious that he's hedging his bets.
Now if Mr. Giordino has publicly come out against NWBO since the last time I checked, again, correct me if I'm wrong.
Fair enough, we'll just have to see. Some days I feel like our grandkids will still be waiting to hear real news about this stock.
I wouldn't count on the 1 year anniversary of the screening halt being anything more than 1 more day of the year.
You've done an excellent job explaining what NWBO's thinking and situation may be but then under your scenario the FDA is either just indifferent and obtuse or trying to hinder NWBO.
Why do I say that?
Because this Phase 3 trial is for patients who have a terminal illness that is seldom if ever cured by SOC. Simply put, they are dead either way.
Risk can and should be viewed differently for patients who are dead either way. That does not mean that just any risk is acceptable but the risk you were describing? Seriously?
And yet here the FDA sits, acting as NWBO were peddling snake oil for baldness and are thus preventing additional patients from having access to the trial and pushing NWBO to the brink of insolvency so that as with DNDN there may end up being no widely available new treatment at all because the company was too shot up by the time it reached the end of the line.
This might explain why LP added those particular directors but if so they've done a poor job of either lobbying FDA or creating political pressure that will force FDA to act.
I work in local government and I know that when an elected official starts fussing about a particular thing we do what they want right away even if we resent it and even if we have to bend the rules or to delay other things or just do them due to resources being diverted.
Having relatives in the federal government current and retired I can say that things are not that different.
A lot of people were hoping that something good could come out of Beau Biden's death and the Cancer Moonshot would serve to light a fire under FDA's posterior that would get a lot more treatments for cancer available much faster.
Even if NWBO had to work entirely behind the scenes there is no visible evidence that anything was at least done to either convince FDA or get politicians to convince them that they should work with companies trying to provide help for patients with essentiallyincurable diseases and use a different yardstick when it comes to measuring risk for those patients.
Maybe NWBO is too weak and small to get political help and maybe BP was pushing in the opposite direction. But the fact remains that the FD, under your scenario is at least indifferent if not hostile to NWBO.
We are living in Groundhog Day and that is not my fault or yours but the filmmakers in Bethesda and maybe at the FDA.
For that reason I already stayed away for nearly a year and found that the same old arguments were swirling around a far lower share price and much heavier dilution.
While I recognized that I was part of the repetition then and absented myself, even the other people's arguments you think are so nuanced and varied compared to my own could have were basically made the last time I was here and that is no surprise since we have had very little clear and verifiable information in the meantime.
So I will probably quit talking about NWBO out of sheer boredom but that will be my decision. Unlike Phil in the film, I can just walk out of the movie and lose only the price of my own admission. In fact unless I sell my tickets they allow me reentry and I can back if they play something more interesting here.
Most investors bought at far more than .50 a share.
It is when those remarks make the same arguments over and over too.
Well I am sure if anyone including NWBO management were willing to buy him out as his average purchase price he would take it.
I would take that offer as well. Hey I would have wasted two years of opportunity cost on the capital etc. but it would be a good deal.
But unless someone is going to make that purchase offer and follow through, they have no right to complain if another shareholder treats a likely irreversible 90% loss of their investment (and counting)as something worth complaining about.
A Debbie Downer is someone would be mad that NWBO was "only" $10.00. A rational human being is someone who is angry that their investment has been mismanaged and/or manipulated to far less than 50 cents a share.
You're right, they're not forced between the lines since investors can always just give up trying to figure out what is going on with the company and be confused for that reason instead. But my point still stands: confusion reigns and NWBO is almost entirely responsible.
They could demand to record the interview and also that Mr. Feuerstein include the entire transcript in his story. That would not stop him from putting a negative spin but would prevent him from filtering out the positive information or taking things out of context without the whole interview being there in the same story to confront him. Since we are in the digital age and kilobytes cost nothing, Mr. Feuerstein cannot use space constraints as an excuse to refuse like a print or broadcast journalist would.
Fact: This silence has destroyed the value of our investment more thoroughly and at much faster rate than Mr. Feuerstein did with Buzdargate and similar maneuvers.
I really do not understand how anyone thinks that releasing positive news could make this situation any worse.
Do we have to drop to 15 cents a share before people stop making that claim?
Forcing shareholders to read between the lines creates confusion, by definition. There are always several equally legitimate and but contradictory ways to read between the lines which is that confusion is created. That confusion in turn creates even more uncertainty than would normally exist with a company of this nature and that uncertainty has destroyed shareholder value.
What I don't get is this: if it was okay for Dr. Liau to say what she did and create all this confusion about the trial then it should be equally okay for either NWBO or Dr. Liau to clear up the confusion. We cannot pretend that NWBO is unaware of this confusion and yet a month before this Phase 3 trial is supposed to end the owners of the company are still be kept in the dark.
Anyone can try but he is the only message board participant I know of with a verified history of being able to get doctors on the phone and on the record. I would be happy for someone more objective about NWBO to call instead.
NWBO has a history of missing deadlines. The most recent major example is when NWBO resized this Phase 3 trial and delayed its completion by a year. While that delay was with more notice than one month out it still came out of left field (though with the benefit of hindsight one could see that Ms. Powers had been laying the groundwork in some public statements).
What about this time?
Well the good news is that the recent regulatory filing mentioned that expenses for the Phase 3 were diminishing of the Phase 3 wound down.
The bad news is that the recent regulatory filing did not (to the best of my recollection) reference the Phase 3 trial completion date of September 2016 even though that would have helped explain more about the draw down in trial expenses and would have reassured shareholders. The bad news is that omission implies that the trial might not be ending in September 2016 and that would be consistent with the fact that this long screening halt has prevented NWBO from fully enrolling the trial.
The shorts are just protecting their investment because they think they can drive NWBO into bankruptcy. If they did gain have huge benefits from shorting from $6.00 to $10.00 then shorting at this level to ride this kill to the ground makes sense since trying to unload would temporarily inflate NWBO's price and while not triggering a short squeeze it would cut into their profits.
Novel idea: Call Linda Liau and ask her to clarify her remarks on patients living longer. Blinding is no excuse because before, Dr. Liau had no problem talking about the Phase 3 trial on video and creating many months of confusion and back-and-forth by being imprecise. If it was okay to say something then, it is okay to something now.
Maybe Mr. Feuerstein can do it: he has a history of digging up researchers and getting them to comment in ways that would normally be regarded as speaking out of turn.
Almost everything here is devoid of content or at least up-to-date content but you can thank certain people in Bethesda and not me.
Precisely right. We all made similar rationalizations for this gamble and saw them confounded. Calling someone crazy for being unwilling to "invest" even more is indeed a bit much.
If NWBO proves out by the end of September 2016 then anyone who bought in the single digits will likely turn a good profit.
But buying more is gambling and probably a losing bet because this company has a long track record of disappointing investors when it comes to releasing news according to an expected timetable.
Still, like an addict I wagered a bit more recently so I cannot criticize others unless they try to fool themselves - or others.
While buying straight shares is better than say options or warrants, our serial dilutions make even straight shares worth less over time and so make them closer in time-based risk to options, something one has to experience to appreciate.
A big "if" and one that has gotten bigger and not smaller since I started investing a few years ago.
Mr. Feuerstein's behavior can be explained either way but the simplest explanation is that he thinks NWBO is a fraudulent company and it has become personal for him. Look how Bill Ackman has gone out of his way to attack Herbalife even when it has been a losing proposition for him for long periods of time. While, yes he has bet financially that Herbalife is effectively a pyramid scheme and that it will collapse or be regulated away it is pretty clear that this has become personal for him. Doubtless Herbalife supporters can and do claim that Mr. Ackman is motivated by greed. Who's right? Hard to say.
You understood my point perfectly, and I believe it is very possible that Mr. Feuerstein is motivated by the same type of thinking that has impelled the actions of people throughout history from the inquisitors in 16th century Spain to prosecutors like Mr. Nifong the prosecutor in the infamous Duke Lacrosse case.
This kind of thinking is dangerous and a slippery slope that any journalist or investigator can fall into.
Once you have decided that someone or some group is evil, the tendency to become highly biased in your investigative work and the presentation of the facts is hard to avoid and it is a short step from there to willfully distorting or in some cases simply manufacturing evidence.
For example, it was Mr. Feuerstein who manufactured the rebuke from MD Anderson. He did not cover a story, he created a story and caused a rift between a company sponsoring a cancer trial and its partner.
Also, when Mr. Feuerstein called Dr. Buzdar he did not do anything to see whether Dr. Buzdar was right in saying that MD Anderson and partner companies had historically released information similar to that Ms. Powers had been sharing about the DCVax Direct Phase 1 trial.
That omission is a willful distortion especially since unpaid message board commentators easily found out that releasing information about Phase 1 trials was pretty standard with respect to MD Anderson not to mention the phramaceutical industry in general. Mr. Feuerstein simply took Dr. Buzdar's word that NWBO was in the wrong because it supported his prejudice against the company.
I don't work at NWBO so it would not be my conspiracy and sadly document dumps are a common practice not specific to NWBO and wouldn't go as far as you do in saying that is a conspiracy. But like you I agree that they are a disservice to stakeholders.
Right now given that DCVax has no dangerous side effects and NWBO has been allowed to languish in life support while FDA messes around "behind the scenes" I'd say that Dr. Pazdur might mean well but either cannot or will not translate his new attitude into observable results. Well given that we all make New Year's resolutions to do better and seldom follow through I only feel sympathy for his loss and cannot be upset that his desire to speed things up has not resulted in well, things actually being speeded up with things like DCVax where the lack of toxicity and lack of a viable SOC means that it would be medically safe to speed things up.
Lawyers call that avalanche of material a "document dump" and even that strategy is designed to make it hard to figure out what has really been going on not to properly inform stakeholders.
As I said before he thinks he's framing a guilty man so in his mind that makes it okay.
Both sides are equally guilty of misrepresentation and that has made it very hard on ordinary investors.
On the one hand it is hard to credit the idea that all the patients in this trial are not necessary since Ms. Powers delayed the end of this trial by a year specifically to add more patients! If we endured that delay and multiple dilutions for no good reason we have every reason to be furious.
On the other hand since existing patients are being treated even during this screening halt, there is no doubt that Mr. Feuerstein is likewise misrepresenting matters to claim that the trial is all but shut down.
Ms. Power's position with both Cognate and NWBO creates such an obvious conflict of interest that most regulators and courts would not honor the MFN especially since it has been shown to be such a raw deal for minority shareholders.
True but having a majority does not make a public firm into a private one and any investor who does not know this is a poor investor. Outcome aside, holding the vote offers minority shareholders an important accountability safeguard since the vote puts Ms. Powers and Cognate on record.
How do we know what a majority of shareholders want if we're not asked. Sure you can do a poll before an election but even if you think, heck, even if you know how that vote will turn out, you still have go through the motions and let people weigh in.
So no, I think the simplest explanation is that Mr. Woodford has neither offered NWBO a loan or asked to do a private placement.
So private placements are also forbidden? He can't loan NWBO money as some of its officers have done?
In fairness, with failure of Phase 3 and the high potential for destructive dilution or insolvency already priced in, I doubt Mr. Feuerstein (in his capacity as an analyst not a message board participant) ever expected to be able to greatly reduce NWBO's share price by giving his opinion. I do think he believes what he is saying and if he is involved in manipulating NWBO he thinks that is a bad stock and that he is framing a guilty man as it were.
So if you're with Woodford then why isn't he buying more at these amazingly low prices?
Given the prior record of big talk followed by not only no results but catastrophically bad results for shareholders like myself, confidence requires hard evidence. Otherwise I might put in more money but I know I am gambling, not investing.
"If" the word you are looking for is "if". That said, I would like to make back my lost money and earn a nice profit so I will be quite happy if you're right!
FDA takes forever on even idiot-proof things (see our screening halt) so we might be waiting a long time even if you're right. That said I sure hope you are, because I'll money in that case!
Exactly and what you are saying applies to conceptual agreements as well. While something may be going on it is not a done deal until it is a done deal.