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A few legitimate questions about that BMY/NWBO trial you claim exists:
1. Can you cite a specific, verifiable source where NWBO claimed that they were partnering with BMY?
2. Who completed this training and where and more importantly, can you point to a verifiable source for this?
3. Which doctor did you speak to you and when?
We all stipulate that manipulation exists but "the market is rigged with manipulation on the short side" in general or least for stocks like NWBO anyway, that just proves my point.
Manipulators have managed to walk this stock almost into the grave even without the cover provided by news.
In fact that manipulators have been far more effective in objective, measurable terms, now when NWBO has stayed silent then they were back when NWBO was more adequately communicating with shareholders.
Therefore, logically, NWBO management and their apologists here can no longer claim "Well, if we talk honestly with our shareholders, they'll just twist it around and that will hurt the PPS more than if we stay silent."
Maybe there are other valid reasons for staying silent even when shareholders who have taken enormous losses are owed a clear explanation by management, but manipulation by the shorts, Mr. Feuerstein and others is not a reasonable excuse any longer.
This tidbit has a lot of gristle since the article is not even written in a coherent fashion. It is almost as if a bunch of scraps of different articles on companies running glioblastoma trials were just mashed together by a computer.
Look I bought several thousand shares at this low, low, price so I am hoping this does mean that BMY and NWBO are linking up.
But I do not think what appears to be a computer generated article is truly our smoking gun.
That said, this is still more news than most have dug up, so thank you!
Mr. Goldman is either:
1. Doing very little if public relations is his primary role
2. Stretching himself too thin to be effective if public relations is but one of several hats he wears.
If it is 1 then Mr. Goldman probably needs to step down.
If it is 2 then Mr. Goldman needs to help hire a dedicated PR person because no one can credibly argue that NWBO's PR operation is adequate, especially given the dire financial situation, abysmal stock price and negative perception out there about this company among those who even know NWBO exists.
Personally, I hope we're looking at scenario 2, in which case hiring that new PR person is a win-win since Mr. Goldman can focus on whatever he is actually doing and do it better, and while Mr. Goldman is busy doing that the new PR person can be doing things like:
1. Educating analysts about NWBO and helping set up quarterly conference calls for Ms. Powers (who doesn't seem to be familiar with that means of informing stakeholders of a publicly traded company).
2. Getting earned media to discuss NWBO's existing accomplishments.
3. Presenting news about all topics NWBO is legally allowed to talk about in a timely and effective fashion.
Look up the word "Sinecure" in the dictionary and you'll find a picture of NWBO's Public Relations person.
That's our problem, not manipulation.
If I had bought at that average price I would likewise be a lot happier. At least I picked up several thousand shares more at 43 cents!
Investors care about these things more than the investigation:
1. Whether the DC Vax L's Phase 3 trial will end on time, produce top line results on time and start the clock on an up or down FDA decision on time.
2. Whether that vague talk of conceptual partnership agreements that we heard months ago will ever translate into real revenue generating partnerships.
3. Whether DCVax Direct Phase 1 will produce top line results on time.
4. Whether DCVax Direct Phase 2 will ever begin.
Also failing that, instead of hearing about this investigation, we would really like to hear about other less critical issues:
1. How many sickness funds we've actually concluded negotiations in Germany with about Hospital Exemption (if any) and why we are not just doing business only with them and leaving the others to stew.
2. When and if Sawston in the UK will ever become operational and how the Brexit will impact the utility of that facility.
3. When and if NWBO will move on to Phase 2 of the Early Access to Medications scheme in the United Kingdom.
If you truly already believe that prosecution will result already (and I assume you do not mean Ms. Powers and associates), then you should be investing before this news breaks since shares are at an all time low.
So should your wealthy friends.
Why would you wait to buy more until that information comes out?
Propellant is far too strong a word.
At most you're going to get a brief bump out of a positive investigation result.
Few who are not in the tank for NWBO management already is going to believe a bespoke investigation by investigators handpicked by Linda Powers.
If Neil Woodford had been allowed to pick the investigators then maybe the report would enjoy broader credibility.
But he was cut out of that process and stopped investing more in NWBO.
The only exception to this would be if Mr. Black presents incontrovertible evidence of highly specific wrongdoing by people like Adam Feuerstein and short interests.
That might not raise NWBO prices long term but it would prevent further manipulation, though with our shares in the mid 40 cent range that would be a case of taking the knife out of an assailant's hand after the victim has already been stabbed to death.
But even then, it is NWBO's science and NWBO's lack of consistent and timely communication on that key topic that has resulted in the mess we're in.
Until NWBO starts communicating about the issues that really matter
Clearing NWBO should not have taken this long. They should have cleared NWBO first and then if they wanted to, publicly announce a Phase 2 of the investigation to root out manipulators etc. they could have done that.
That would have put some of those Phase V questions to rest and at the same time started a new clock on showing that manipulation has taken place.
The fact that they are trying to conflate two ultimately separate issues suggests that for whatever reason they want to use this investigation as just another ongoing excuse not to properly inform us of what is going on with our company. Or less charitably, this investigation will confirm some degree of wrongdoing and they want to find the "right" moment to own up to that just like they paired that NASDAQ regulatory announcement with a bit of ersatz positive news.
Investors do not care about that NWBO investigation.
Investors will impressed only by clear and incontrovertibly positive news about DCVax or about partnerships that will bring in revenue and serial toxic dilution.
Granted, a published negative finding would hammer NWBO shares.
But Ms. Powers knows that too and it is my understanding she and not Mr. Black decided when and maybe even if the results of that investigation are released.
In any case, no matter how good those investigative findings sound, most investors will disregard positive findings by investigators handpicked by Ms. Powers.
Even those who believe positive findings will not care. Lots of biotechs with honest executives fail.
Accusations against shadowy short sellers by Mr. Black will likewise provide, at most provide a brief tonic for our share price because he does not have subpoena or arrest power and guess what, fingering those shorts did not work for the Washington Post (the paper that destroyed Nixon) so it will not work for a private investigator either.
Another and likely my last throw of the dice: I bought two thousand more shares.
Ironically I made money too since I bought them at 43 cents and guess what? We're up to 45 cents.
Too bad all of my other shares are underwater and this will probably drop again tomorrow.
Well, I can hope that this time will be different and that some way, somehow Ms. Powers will actually come through with real news in September or sooner.
We were fools but remember that Ms. Powers was really good at creating that completely false expectation that something great could happen at any time.
Given that she has inside information we do not have, Ms. Powers knew that things were not going to happen but tried to make it seem that things were imminent. Remember for example that time she referenced the gentleman from Roche at a conference?
Even after she totally shut up we had bought into that mentality, helped along by numerous deluded shareholders and outright pumpers.
When we were still, in the money, we were afraid that it would be "greedy" to sell early only to have it shoot up past where we sold, our chance at life changing money gone in the blink of an eye.
Because we honestly believed NWBO was making real progress (where we somehow just couldn't see it, of course) we were scared to be out of this stock for even a few days.
Naturally, when NWBO started going down, we figured that it would take a publicly acknowledged trial failure for things to get this bad.
No one honestly expected that NWBO could remain solvent with no positive news for a year.
Thus we were afraid and to some extent still remain afraid that if we are out of this stock even one week, that will be when it magically decides to come clean and we miss out after having "locked in" our losses.
My biggest concern (besides us being totally wrong and it going to zero) is that NWBO will do multiple toxic financings before we hear good news.
Some people have been saying that the small amount of our last cash raise coupled with Ms. Power's appearance at a September 2016 conference suggests that between now and then we will have some big things happen.
I will go ahead and bet on that possibility but I almost feel like that by doing so, I'm guaranteeing that Ms. Powers will not release anything during that time frame or for a long time to come.
Now if I could be sure that by not investing and taking advantage of these prices that they would release news, of course I'd hold my fire because I have more than enough invested to benefit financially from a price recovery (we're way too low to talk about a price increase at this point!)
I'm actually going to buy about $1,000.00 more worth of this stock this week. I have to wait because my broker restricts funds from being invested in stocks under $3.00 for 3 business days.
I doubt positive news will break before I can make that last throw of the dice but if it does I'll be happy because I have a lot riding already.
I just figured this: If I am not willing to invest at least a little below $1.00 a share then what justification do I have for keeping what little remains on the table?
While it is certainly possible for September 2016 to come and go without news (and I know I've thought this before) I just can't see this doing anything besides either going to zero or going big very soon.
We cannot be sure that the lawyers and regulators required the silence.
Lawyers have no authority to tell their clients what to do and are only looking at things from their client's personal interest. It is up to each client to determine whether their obligations to their shareholders or the survival of their business requires them to speak when their lawyers would rather they stay silent.
Regulators may have required this silence but no one has ever produced a single law or regulation giving them the authority to impose gag orders. I hasten to add that this is true even though others have asked for someone to cite that rule or law and no ever has.
Your opinion may or may not be right but if so the investigators could exonerate NWBO and then do a second phase where they try to point the finger at others.
The power behind a blow is less important than the timing, as Sun Tzu says. So even if your theory about this investigation is totally true, by wasting so much time, the results of this investigation will not have the desired effect and may come too late to save the company.
Also just because these lawyers are going after other things does not mean things will go well:
Remember when Kenn Starr was supposed to investigate one thing and then wandered off into the woods and started-in on Monica Lewinsky?
Not only did he fail to achieve his goal but he also totally discredited the idea of having a special prosecutor and that helped ensure years later that DOJ would be free to leave Hillary Clinton alone.
I have been gone a long time but somehow I believe that NWBO will produce some positive news between now and that September 2016 conference that Ms. Powers will be attending.
I never thought that things would get this bad and that was why I set a historic HIGH as my target price return before I returned.
I likewise never thought that you guys would still be reading tea leaves and have almost no information to debate with after so many months.
Still, I might as well try one more toss of the dice!
An Apology to the Moderators, Board Members and My Departure.
I apologize in advance for wasting your time cleaning up the excrement of my off topic posts from this board, posts which I left during my unseemly squabble with another person here.
Hopefully, you'll at least find some comic relief in reading our exchange.
I apologize to everyone else here for dumping rhetorical toxic waste in your environment because while some of my points have been good all sincerely how I felt (at least in that moment), many were gratuitous and counterproductive.
Truth be told, this dry spell of news has frustrated me and rather than make a bigger fool out of myself, I'm leaving.
I will not post anything further here until NWBO has hit $15.00.
Hopefully, by then, enough developments will have taken place that there will be new issues to discuss.
In any case, thanks for patiently putting up with me for as long as you have.
Disclaimer: Everything I have said above should be taken as supposition unless I have cited a specific source. Please do your own due diligence and do not rely on upon message board postings to make your investment decisions. Know that my suppositions may be misleading because my grasp of the life sciences is limited and just as importantly the publicly available information about many aspects of this company is equally limited, leading to the age old problem of analysis: garbage in, garbage out.
Like it or not the use of all capital letters is considered screaming and this was taught to me in high school way back when they treated the Internet like the butler in Downton Abbey treated the first telephone belowstairs.
I doubt you can find too many netiquette or online etiquette guides that would say differently but maybe times have changed.
As to my accusations, they have as much or as little merit as yours.
Thankfully the moderators are likely going to delete both of our posts though they may be quite unhappy at all the work we've given them.
Please stop screaming at people and be civil.
This kind of quote on your part is entirely unacceptable behavior:
I didn't want to take credit for the artful use of language so I used quote marks to indicate they were not my own. I did not name the individual because he is from very recent history and I do not want to get into a political debate.
But since you asked:
I've haven't done my research about your prior posts because to be honest, winning or losing this argument with you doesn't matter.
I'm here to pass the time while I wait to reap the rewards that come with bearing the risk of recognizing a great opportunity that has been "scoffed at by the experts."
As for being a swing trader or options trader, I'm an old fashioned buy and hold investor.
I'll jump on an opportunity like KYTH when I've done my due diligence (I'm inordinately proud of the few hundred bucks I made on a very small investment) but I talked about that here only after the opportunity to make or lose money was done, and I only bought straight shares (no margin and no options).
The profits from that venture went to buy more NWBO, incidentally and I am still in the money on those new shares as well even at the current price in the $11 range.
Disclaimer: Everything I have said above should be taken as supposition unless I have cited a specific source. Please do your own due diligence and do not rely on upon message board postings to make your investment decisions. Know that my suppositions may be misleading because my grasp of the life sciences is limited and just as importantly the publicly available information about many aspects of this company is equally limited, leading to the age old problem of analysis: garbage in, garbage out.
Fine, I categorically stipulate with you, from now on that everything I say about NWBO going forward should be taken as an educated guess or if you prefer, a supposition unless I cite a specific source for it.
To make you even happier I'll include a beachlifeisfun disclaimer that anything I do not cite is suppositon at the bottom of every post in bold.
I would welcome NWBO providing more facts, a chief reason I've tried to goad Mr. Girodino (Pyrr) into writing a negative article and forcing the company to clear the air.
I think that if they did, it would hurt the shorts badly (though prematurely thus reducing the maximum yield of the blast) and that is why he dares not go on record and damage his public persona as an analyst by making such a bad call.
But naturally your cute comment about what I bold, is a prelude to saying that I'm really Pyrr/Michonne/whoever else.
During the French Revolution after awhile those who adopted the dress of the sans coulottes were regarded as counterevolutionary because they were trying to look too revolutionary.
I don't think that is a kind of paranoia you should be emulating.
NWBO leaves us nothing but supposition due to lack of transparency and following this company is like pracitcing the old discipline of Sovietology.
And as with Sovietology, the lack of transparency by the object of your interest tends to bias one towards pessimistic conclusions (i.e. the Soviet leadership is bent on world domination etc.).
I'm glad your bias is in the opposite direction if that works for you.
My investment is based on what I can sink my teeth into like the Direct data and the Information Arm and that has been more than enough for me to add shares even in the $11.00 range.
You'd have to go to an alternate universe to get the PR because in the one in which we live, HE has yet to get off the ground which is what I meant by "we all know what happened."
Thus we lack what could have been a useful source of unblinded data about the effectiveness of HE.
Thankfully there is at least the Information Arm but that is not the same as having hundreds or even thousands of paying patients who end up living longer or even surviving far more than the historical control.
It is for that reason that I said I "was hoping that the HE results would be there" meaning that when the approval for HE was announced I hoped we would get moving quickly and by now we would have lots of real world evidence that DCVax L works with real patients outside of the simulated environment of a trial where people can talk about "cherrypicking" and the like.
Instead, we've been more than a year out and not a hint of progress...unless you can find the PR showing any progress of course.
A breakthrough can long be retarded by the ignorance and prejudice of the medical community and history has proven this over and over. This kind of continuing education is crucial to getting doctors to embrace change.
I think the patients they added to the trial restarted the clock on everything which is why that change was so annoying.
That's also why shareholders went ballistic this spring when an addition of trial sites was called an "expansion" and people took that to mean they were adding patients and delaying the results yet again.
Notice how quickly NWBO jumped to clarify that adding trial sites would, if anything, speed up the completion of the trial.
I have a feeling that NWBO was worried enough about DCVax L (how could they not be since the trial has been modified more than the Millennium Falcon) and so they delayed it for the sole purpose of ensuring that solid Direct results from Phase 1 or even Phase 2 would come out before they had to face the music.
Hopefully like the Millennium Falcon, all you had to do was bang on the Phase 3 trial to get it working again.
By waiting on Direct if the Phase 3 trial for the older DCVax L technology disappoints, either because of inherent issues with the technology or because the trial design had issues all will not be lost because by then the dramatically different DCVax Direct will be coming in with dramatic results on patients who are on the doorstep of hospice.
I was hoping that the HE results would also be there to help serve as evidence regardless of the results for L but we all know what happened with that.
NWBO has been looking to partner DCVax Prostate for years and nothing has happened.
Declaring your interest in partnering is, on its own, about as effective as declaring that you're running for president.
While Ms. Powers did her famous hinting about partnerships involving checkpoint inhibitors this spring, so far, we've heard exactly nothing.
So based upon the history of DCVax Prostate and the history of hints and timelines from NWBO executives being misleading, I would not hold my breath.
While in the market we say that the past does not predict future results in history we borrow from a man who was wrong about almost everything else and say that history often repeats itself first as tragedy and then as farce.
To be clear, I'm still very, very, long NWBO and will take advantage of the dip that was inevitable because of no news during the last month or so.
We all knew the news drought was going to be long, and the ASCO Direct release was wonderful but it delayed the inevitable.
Like the military in the 1990's and 2000's we couldn't live on the Reagan buildup forever.
Naturally, I and my net worth will be glad to be wrong and I will not mourn the lost extra money I could have made on newly bought cheap shares if news is delayed until September (or a bit later).
Woodford's got it right and its Investing 101. If you stick around and hold quality the market almost always rewards you. Maybe someone who bought stocks right before the crash in 1929 was never made whole but if you dollar cost average over several years you're good so that's an extreme example. If you want to get rich in less than a year, the market almost always punishes you.
NWBO is quality but has not been recognized yet. You can duplicate what some of us have won (so far) with NWBO by buying blue chips when they're beat up and holding (but that happens just once a decade or so).
But you cannot duplicate with blue chips what we're about to do in the next year and Mr. Woodford knows that and so he's "patient" with his capital.
That's it basically: a few delays and bit more risk now in exchange for hitting the ground running and grabbing every loose dollar blowing across the market segment when approval happens.
If NWBO threw everything it had at finishing trials it could get things done quicker but that would be a strategy for a company trying to become a buyout target, not a company seeking to go it alone and reap the full reward commensurate with the risks shareholders like you have shouldered for a long time.
Ms. Powers makes it easy since NWBO has, as she put it "multiple ways to win."
Naturally our first thought is that we can win on all the ways and so we start doing some ridiculous multiplying.
In reality, limited resources, (amongst other factors) dictate that NWBO can only practically pursue one or two of these ways.
Admitting that won't do, and so it has been left to us to realize that multiple ways to win really just means having options (which is the case with every other company out there.
Though admittedly NWBO has a much richer set of options than most other companies at its market capitzalization and stage of development that one could name.
There is certainly no money accumulating or it would have to show up in NWBO's quarterly reports.
A fair question deserves a fair answer: "if ever" (or never as you put) I mean the following:
The negotiations for Hospital Exemption reimbursement might take so long that DCVax L will already have won full approval before they're concluded.
In that case, the negotiations for HE will probably have laid the groundwork for standard reimbursement and perhaps have kept NWBO from having to wait yet another year after approval to start selling the vaccine but that will be the only real benefit.
As nice as being able to get reimbursement on your product immediately after full approval is, this is not exactly the vision conjured up by NWBO when they first started discussing HE.
You're right on the money, new Direct data is the most potent catalyst we have at least based on the information that the company has shared.
Patient by patient is not a minor detail that should buried in an SEC filing while being omitted in public conversations with the company's bosses (the shareholders like us).
Here's an analogy:
Imagine my boss asked how me how things went at my library today and I orally tell her that everything is swell and talk about how much our patrons like using our laptops.
But then to cover my behind I write a dense, voluminous e-mail to her in which I bury a little nugget like the fact that half my laptops were stolen by thieves and will have to be replaced and in the meantime customer service will be negatively impacted.
My boss doesn't find out for the better part of a year, is rightly be furious with me and writes me up (at the least).
And no, my defense shouldn't be "Well you should have read my entire e-mail filing and not believed my glowing words about the laptops in person."
I can only imagine would it would be like to have held NWBO so long and experienced so many ups and downs.
I've held blue chips in my dividend portfolio for roughly a decade and that's just a qualitatively different experience although I try to use the patience from there and apply it here.
What I've learned about investing promising biotech companies like NWBO is this:
1. Don't get in too early, you'll get diluted to hell and take on lots of risk yet reap fewer rewards than those who start investing much later.
2. Don't get in too late or you'll miss out on the big gains because the market will have already priced in the potential.
You have to find just the right spot, where most people don't realize what's about to happen and the market hasn't priced it in yet.
NWBO's leadership including Ms. Powers and Mr. Goldman did a good job of making me think NWBO was near the finish line in their TV comments. They had to know better sooner than they admitted it and certainly didn't rush to correct themselves.
I'm glad they tricked me though since I've still made good money.
If I were making my initial investments today with the knowledge that we were not a year away from Phase 3 being done, I would have utilized dollar cost averaging and have a better cost basis.
But with an average price in the mid $6.00 range I'm not too badly off.
Thanks, because if the Germans weren't being stingy then the opportunity to make a big portion of 100 grand a patient would be too much to resist, even at the cost of slow walking the Phase 3.
If revenue starts coming in the door you'll have an E for your P/E and that changes the whole conversation about the company and adds more credibility than announcing a hundred new trial sites in Canada or on Mars for that matter.