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This run-up is almost exactly the type I bought into the first time I bought KBLB back in January 2012. I've been able to average down considerably since then, but I don't envy the folks that are bickering over $0.005 PPS moves. I'm at a nice sit-and-wait level and I think the tech is just fantastic here. As a molecular biologist I can appreciate what they've done, and now I'm looking forward to some business moves in the next few months.
I think it's important for all on this board to realize that it's easy to get caught up and think you're going to "miss the train" or something like that. Yes, we may get great news in the coming days, weeks, months. Either way, do your DD first. This is a great company and I think it will succeed but make sure you understand WHAT news we're waiting for and why it's important. There are still some fuzzy timelines out there (it's 3/22 and we have no idea when the CC will be) but the recent PR rush indicates that KBLB is in overdrive at the moment.
Shares are cheap and it's easy to get greedy when you read predictions that tout "$0.50 by May" and garbage like that. KBLB is poised for a major movement upwards, but be realistic with your expectations as to the level and rate.
When the business-end actually gets announced, you can be sure that business folks (read: not normal Joes that frequent a free stock message board) will be working out the P/E, projections, and long term price points. I feel comfortable in saying that I can exit this stock with a profit even if I bought it at this point, but remember: Bulls make money, bears make money, pigs get slaughtered.
GLTA
You're looking closer than me!
Since we're just waiting on some news now, we can let our minds wander a bit...Anyone want to guess volume in the first half hour? I say 1.4M
EDIT: Or are people afraid of the $0.10s?
I do prefer a machine replicating the spinning process (much more control and reliability) but doubt that it's currently economical for mass production (good for research quantities though? Researchers willing to pay higher prices for small quantities).
In academia, as in science, there are words that have different meanings apart from the colloquial. The title of 'Assistant Professor' does not diminish the position, intelligence, or capability of a professor. Just an FYI.
Trying to scrounge some .07s to get to a nice whole number so I can wait happily. We'll see if it dips down.
Now I'm satisfied with the assumption! Love the pace KBLB is on. Exciting times.
And THAT is why people point to Kims IQ. Someone that smart is much less likely to blunder that badly.
I really think that KBLB is on such a precipice that typical penny BS won't hurt it. I hope I'm right about that because to date (for my time in KBLB) I have been fortunately enough to not have to hear people ranting about what NITE is up to and how the MMs are out to get them. This is like a Sandals resort compared to the pinks I've been in!
I guess just to be clear, which is important on this board, I don't think KBLB is a PnD or that it operates in PnD tactics.
I think the evidence shows that they're completely aboveboard in all respects, and the posters that come out of the woodwork every so often screaming "Pump and Dump!" or something like that are simply working the same angle that works on most Pinks: Can I scare anyone into selling low and buying high?
KBLB is not a PnD in any sense of the word. It is a sub-$0.25 stock and in that vein, you'll get people playing games. We're lucky in the fact that Kim is a legitimate business person and Ben Hansel is no Joe Noel.
I would agree with Mike's sentiment...Those that tend to get fleeced the most by PnD are those that get the newsletter on Monday just before open (for instance). They are literally chomping at the bit to buy, forced to raise their price until they can get filled. Meanwhile, those that were pumping can sell into the rush. It's pretty well established that that's how PnDs work. Those Monday buyers hold the bag.
I first heard about KBLB in what I would have considered a pump phase (PPS ~ 0.10, with claims it would be 0.23 within weeks) but waited to buy my big position until the PPS dropped. I don't know that KBLB initiated the pump (ie. Kim) but nonetheless it was touted as a momentum play. "Buy now or be sorry!" "Train's leaving the station!" It takes self-control and probably a bad experience or two to know that very rarely is that the case.
PnDs also come in multiple flavors though. A true PnD with a crappy shell company is just pure greed, but it's actually sadder when you have a real up-and-coming company that gets highjacked because their CEO partnered with the wrong group.
Personally, I don't think KBLB at its present stage is too impacted by PnD economics. Newsletters going out talking about KBLB don't tend to coincide with huge rises and drops of SP (at least for most of the last year). I think KBLB is on a solid foundation, fairly unencumbered by market makers, shorting, or PnD. Its share price rests solely on its own rate of:
1) Scientific work
2) Business agreements
3) Communication of results from 1 and 2
I'm confident (but never sure) that KBLB will make me money from these levels, but more importantly I'm confident that this is a real company with a real product and a share price, that in my mind, accurately represents the worth of the company given the information we have concretely. If SP was correlated with conjecture, this train would have left the station and come back by now. I think the way we have it now is a much more healthy way to grow the share price. Precludes a huge crash later. I hope.
1/22/2013: Kraig Biocraft Laboratories to Launch Monster Silk(TM) Pilot Production Program
2/4/2013: Kraig Biocraft Laboratories' Monster Silk(TM) Pilot Production Program Enters Second Stage Ahead of Schedule
2/25/2013: Kraig Biocraft Laboratories Provides Update on the Monster Silk(TM) Pilot Production Program's Second Stage
I don't think I'm reaching, and I'd also bet you're not wrong, just assuming.
Just a difference about how much we're willing to assume. Nothing personal about it. Even though that was 'weeks ago', they didn't mention that they were in mysterious Phase 3 in today's PR? All I'm saying is that I'm trying to extrapolate as little as possible and I don't have any grief about things. It seems that so much of the stress people seem to feel on this board is about things that aren't even a concrete reality.
The number of the phase is pretty much irrelevant given that we have little idea what they're actually doing. All that I'm saying is you made an extrapolation that I, very personally, think is a little too loose.
If they came out tomorrow and PR'd that they totally ramped up to Phase IV that people would nearly mess themselves, even though it's supposedly a three phase plan.
I think we all know what the big news will be to get us out of these levels. It has nothing to do with phases, though they're an obvious prerequisite.
3rd stage started weeks ago.
In my limited opinion, I think there are in fact separate factions. It's easy to pick out people that complained about silence, and it's easy to pick out people that complain about perceived fluff. It's a lot more difficult to recall who DIDN'T complain about silence and then did complain about fluff, especially just from memory.
In my particular case, I had no problem with silence. I know how science works, and I can surmise that adding business to that process would only make things take longer. I read these PRs and they are reassuring to me, but I don't know if they would convince anyone new to buy. Maybe they would, in which case they're doing their job. But since a PR isn't free, and it doesn't appear like there's a whole lot of information in the preceding few, I'd be happier with a once-a-month than once-a-week, but realistically what I'd like is once-there's-news.
Again, I prefer over PRing to under, and it's subjective and oversimplified to say that I'd prefer 'just right'. These PRs make me feel good about my investment, and maybe that's good enough.
Blog post. Agree.
I'm happy KBLB is moving faster, and I guess I'd rather have more PRs than none, so I don't consider this complaining. I've just been in too many pinks with these kinds of PRs.
What's frustrating here (aside from the clinical lack of details) is that I truly believe things are going well over there, but the PRs sound like someone trying to convince you things are going well without showing you any evidence.
Like the news, but it's a blog post. Excited for real news soon though!
Just bought this and chatted with the author. She said I can email her questions anytime.
http://www.amazon.com/Spider-Silk-Evolution-Spinning-Snagging/dp/064309847X
Got it. Slowly accumulating what, for me, is a really nice sized investment.
I've got an bid out there, but nobody's selling to me. Not enough dumpers up here!
In for more in the AM, if the PPS stays/drops.
Wow! No posts since Saturday...Everyone Super Bowl'd out?
No 6:05AM PR this morning, and that's just fine with me :) Wait until you have something to say, and start a blog in the mean time for little things.
If I could hire one more person for the KBLB staff right now (that wasn't scientific), it would probably be a social media PR rep who was in charge of curating a blog written in laymen's terms, and to whatever ends they may be useful, social media sites (FB, Twitter, etc.) There are people with expendable cash that would buy shares if they heard the story of KBLB that will never find it through the PRs.
Hahahaha. Good catch.
A) Nothing said on this board will have a significant effect on share price.
B) NOTHING SAID ON THIS BOARD WILL HAVE A SIGNIFICANT EFFECT ON SHARE PRICE.
C) Only commercialization will raise the PPS to the levels we all hope it hits.
D) The science here is sound. Listen to ZF or others with scientific knowledge when it comes to that end. Ignore those without the background knowledge unless they back up their claim with some evidence, because you can easily be led astray.
E) The board needs more business experts. It's more than just selling some silk. I think most realize that but it would be nice to have some more business type discussions.
I'm crazy positive on KBLB, especially because of what I've directly read about their science. I hope the business end holds up, but realize that our potential is hard to map. Who will team up with us? Buyout? Supplier? Patents? Lots of people have thoughts but I think they get rolled around so much on the board people just think they're facts. A conference call would be nice after the next big PR to allow us the opportunity to hear the story in a narrative sense, rather than through discrete PRs.
There's so much conjecture here that it's becoming difficult to weed through the bull to get to good questions. Everyone's so busy throwing out crazy claims, and discounting the crazy claim from someone else.
It used to be a productive place to ask questions and get answers, but the same factors that chased ZF away are pushing others away too. Balance doesn't mean insanely positive and insanely negative people talking over each other. Critical does not mean bad. It's about finding out if the company you've invested in is doing what you're comfortable investing in. I don't think the board is giving that information anymore, and it's likely correlated with the turnover of active posters.
In my opinion, we will my $0 on selling our worms for food. That is my business opinion. You asked, I answered.
People may eat silkworms, but they are not going to be eating Kraig Lab transgenic worms.
FDA for medical, way in the future.
I wouldn't seem like I was looking for disagreements so much if the board would keep to talking about things that will happen in the short term rather than longer term. The conjecture is too high and everything just sounds like "KBLB will provide silk to the astronauts and there'll be submarines made of waterproof silk, and and and"
Commercialization is paramount now, everything else comes later. We're not there yet. I hope we're close (2013) but there's just not any good hints. Maybe in 60-90 days we'll know more, and I'm patient.
That was my point...
Food? That's crazy. There's no way our worms are worth more as food when there are plenty of wild-type worms out there.
In no way are we changing the silkworm.
Biological engineering can take us beyond the capabilities of living animals. Stronger silk, or more elastic silk is a very attainable goal and Kim is no fool for aiming higher. We agree there. I was only referring to the whole package, the 'pure' silk as something we will never be able to truly replicate. That is why I think the task is one of vanity. If we can exceed the parameters, why limit ourselves to 'pure' spider silk? We'd be limiting our potential! IMO
/Last post of the day. Busy one!
Exactly Mike!
I totally respect the possibility that you are correct there. If pure spider silk offers new, and desirable, characteristics to the partners it something that should be looked into.
True purity though, as a concept, would require such an extensive understanding of the protein structure, content, and layout of the natural webs, including an understanding of the inherent variation within. Biology is often much more fuzzy than perfectly repeating blocks, and that variation is just as important as knowing the overall pattern. My experience as a biologist tells me that the only way to get 'pure' spider silk is to let the spider spin it. We can almost never measure up to what natural selection has been working on and perfecting for millions of years.
EDIT: To clarify, just because I don't think it's tenable doesn't mean I don't think you're right in that some people ARE in fact waiting for that. I only question whether they should.
I don't think that 'pure' spider silk is the absolute target here. The buyers (partners) want fibers that can do what they need them to do (strength, elasticity, glowing red (jk)) It's more important for KBLB that they can make fibers that fit into the marketplace, rather than those fibers being pure spider silk.
It's a great exercise in a 'can we do it' sort of a way, but that's the academic in me. I think if our chimeric silk meets (or hopefully exceeds) the demands of our potential suitors, that's where the time/energy/money should be spent. Now if pure spider silk is something that the buyers want, that's another story.
http://phys.org/news/2013-01-unravel-mysteries-spider-silk.html
Research out of ASU discussing neat new ways to study spider silk properties.
Abstract:
Spider silks possess nature’s most exceptional mechanical properties, with unrivalled extensibility and high tensile strength. Unfortunately, our understanding of silks is limited because the complete elastic response has never been measured—leaving a stark lack of essential fundamental information. Using non-invasive, non-destructive Brillouin light scattering, we obtain the entire stiffness tensors (revealing negative Poisson’s ratios), refractive indices, and longitudinal and transverse sound velocities for major and minor ampullate spider silks: Argiope aurantia, Latrodectus hesperus, Nephila clavipes, Peucetia viridans. These results completely quantify the linear elastic response for all possible deformation modes, information unobtainable with traditional stress–strain tests. For completeness, we apply the principles of Brillouin imaging to spatially map the elastic stiffnesses on a spider web without deforming or disrupting the web in a non-invasive, non-contact measurement, finding variation among discrete fibres, junctions and glue spots. Finally, we provide the stiffness changes that occur with supercontraction.
I completely agree with this sentiment. I don't think it makes any sense to PR Big Red without a tacit understanding that it's something marketable. Could the PR have waited until independent tests were done? Probably. But that's neither here nor there because I think it's fairly standard procedure to run in house, unofficial tests and then farm it out to the pros for the specs.
Granted, he certainly wasn't withholding a big golden egg haha
To the Google point, if you Google "spider silk fiber" KBLB comes up 5 hits down. You'd have to actively try not to find it if you had any idea what you were Googling (assuming you're looking for spider silk applications).
If you're in the know of textiles, maybe you know KBLB.
If you're in the know of transgenics, maybe you know KBLB.
If you're in the know of spider silk, you probably know KBLB (or at least Randy Lewis who will eventually lead you to KBLB).
If you're an average Joe that wants to get involved in spider silk, I still contend that Google will be the source people will go to before GNW.
I also don't think that we're going to (or should) get a PR at the start of every week just to keep up communication with the investors. They may as well just start a Tumblr if they want to do that. I'm not mad that they put out the PR. I get it. Would it be easier to say that I was let down that it wasn't bigger news? Yes, but that wouldn't be entirely accurate. I don't expect every PR to be world-shaking, but I do expect every PR to give us new information on the business side or science side of things. This was neither. Exposure means nothing without hard tangibles, be it scientific or financial. This is blog-worthy for sure.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that my expectations mean nothing! Who the heck am I? I would do IR differently than most companies, but that's probably why I'm not an IR rep. I'm just milling around waiting for the news which I think is inevitable (even if it's far off) and offering my opinion when I have one. It doesn't make my opinion worth anything, but what the heck else are any of us doing here?
Additionally I think if people are looking into getting into the ground level of a textile/spider silk stock and didn't already know about KBLB (possible or even probable given the stark lack of KBLBs name in the 2011/2012 rash of very public stories) then they'd likely be using Google over scouring PR Newswire. It's like PRs run in the crawler on CNN. They're just as hidden as the PR with respect to the truly outside investor.
I agree, but I'm not opposed to buying their mistakenly sold shares to add to mine!
Go KBLB!
I don't complain about silence. I know how long science takes. It's not as if this changes my opinion of KBLB at all, but it's a minor league move in my humblest of opinions. "Look, someone wrote something nice about us!" If it was "Look, lots of people wrote something nice about us" it would be a little more valuable. There could be a synthesis of the statements within.
I'm in this for the science and I'm admittedly not a business savvy person, no quarrels there. But my canned response to this would be "PR for the company you want to be, not the company everyone thinks you are."
I'm loving the science, and being patient with the business. I'm super positive on KBLB (or I wouldn't be reading these boards) so I guess I was just giving my opinion on what I perceive to be a PR with minimal upside, and a downside of looking amateurish. That's all. It's not like there's much else to talk about until we get real news.
Investors in KBLB or potential investors only need to Google for that info. Put it on the website, don't waste a PR on it. Obviously just my opinion, but I've invested in companies that had fluff PRs like this before. KBLB is usually good at them (even if a little vague) but this just seems like a PR for PRs sake. On the flip side, maybe I can buy in the 5s today.
For a planned PR (a la Ben's now infamous deleted email) this is a pretty lame PR, I agree.
You know there are. To be clear, if you don't do your own DD and you are using a board as your only source of info, my sympathy for your losses only goes as far as basal human empathy. I don't blame a poster for the actions of a trader. Each trade happens by the trader's trigger finger.
Now all that being said, the link between THIS SWA alert and KBLB directly has not been demonstrated to me, but the past relationship between Ben (and therefore KBLB) and these types is documented. That certainly opens the door to suspect that the SWA alert this week could have been paid for.
Again, I profess my ignorance to the legality but as far as I'm concerned, as long as Ben isn't telling them the news up front and only indicates that there will be a PR, I'm not too worried. In this case, the PR was effectively public information, at least to any that read this board. Ben is not restricted from PRing a PR, as silly as it may seem.
There's lots of great discussion on the board right now about a potentially self-imposed bottleneck on news. That's interesting. At the end of the day, for me, it's not something I'll trade on or panic about. I am fully aware that other people have different goals and trading strategies that make this information more or less pertinent. To them, I say have at it. What I don't enjoy is reading pure conjecture not grounded in evidence.
If one is worried, they should call Ben and ask if KBLB or his group paid for the pump. A vague answer or an affirmative answer would definitely give us something real to talk about. I just know I won't be emailing Ben on this matter because I just don't care.