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Folks who will believe naked shorting fables without evidence are more like present day flat-earthers and moon-landing-deniers.
We have solid short interest data from FINRA (and earlier from NASDAQ when nwbo was listed there).
We have daily volume data.
We have daily short interest, although many here are still confused about market maker shorting vs end investor shorting.
None of the real data supports the silly speculation that there are 100s of millions of naked shorts. Feel free to save this post because I bet it is still true a year from now.
No, the final evidence is that there is no way to disprove a fantasy, and that you somehow do not understand that.
Apparently you have zero evidence to back up your claims about nwbo trading patterns and "voting irregularities", so you fall back on the argument that I can't disprove bigfoot and Santa.
When you hit rock bottom, that's a sign to stop digging.
Getting even more vague with "certain irregulatities found on recent votes".
Here's a challenge for you. Please connect the "certain irregularities" for nwbo to any known and proven case of naked short selling. If you can do so, I'll take it seriously.
Earlier you mentioned trading patterns. Can you connect nwbo trading patterns to any known and proven case of naked short selling? I'd take that seriously too.
There are not many proven cases of naked shorting, but you can find a few on the SEC website.
I assure you that I did not miss your point, just found it silly.
The claims of nwbo naked shorting started with Larry Smith on SeekingAlpha. He was challenged to provide evidence. He cited SEC fails-to-deliver data. Again he was challenged with the SEC's own words that FTD are NOT proof of shorting, much less naked shorting. Still waiting for Smith's reply.
When someone makes an outrageous claim based on no evidence, the onus is on that person to provide evidence, not for someone else to provide contrary evidence.
Hence the mentions of bigfoot and Santa Claus. My point is that there is no way to disprove absolute fiction, which you either miss or choose to ignore.
By your logic, bigfoot and Santa Claus are real because there is no way to factually disprove them.
More importantly, can't have a short squeeze without significant short interest!
As of the latest FINRA report, there is less than $4,000,000 on the short side of nwbo. Hardly enough to start a squeeze.
Don't believe the nonsense about vast quantities of naked shorting unless someone can present factual evidence (as opposed to just Larry Smith believes it).
Woodford overall owns 24.8m as of his most recent 13-G filing.
Of that total, 18.3m is in the Equity Income Fund that is all over the news recently.
Filing for Woodford overall:
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1072379/000121390019002518/sc13g0219a3woodford_north.htm
Filing for Equity Income fund that is part of the overall total:
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1072379/000121390019002524/sc13g0219a5lfwoodford_north.htm
Woodford restrictions are interesting, but not that surprising.
Concentrated bets
Less liquid stocks
Unlisted holdings
One thing those have in common is getting crushed on the downside. Forced selling of positions leads to poor sale prices, which devalues the NAV of the remaining portfolio, which leads to more selling.
The market also knows what the fund owns, and may start selling small positions quickly, which further depresses the prices for subsequent large Woodford sales.
This could get ugly.
The typical standard is average (mean) daily volume over a 65 day period. 65 days is one trading quarter to avoid bias due to extremes around announcements like earnings.
Median daily volume is actually better than mean at mitigating the impact of outliers.
Median dollar volume is better still because it smooths data in event of stock splits.
2 hours into today's trading nwbo is at 2.5x average daily volume, and should easily be the highest volume day in 2019.
Pretty low volume?
nwbo has traded 1.5 times average volume in the first hour. By what standard do you consider that low volume?
You've made some interesting hidden assumptions. I have no idea if they are correct, but let me suggest alternatives.
Starting number - no idea, but if someone said "thousands", then 2,000 sounds like the most optimistic assumption possible.
Are all queries identical in difficulty and time to resolve? You make a hidden assumption that they are similar. My intuition is that is likely not the case.
Are request resolutions linear over time? This is related to the previous assumption, resulting in your guess that a similar number are resolved each month.
Consider the possibility that the "low hanging fruit" is harvested quickly. That is, a lot of easy requests are resolved in the first couple of months. Then the number resolved declines over time as the more difficult queries remain. Think 80/20 rule.
Cognate settlement - a few thoughts
1) Cognate clearly had a valid legal case. NWBO is paying them $2m upfront, 12m shares, plus the possibility of more down the road.
It appears to read that Cognate can get $10m for any approval, including non-US. Interesting
2) For the roughly half year of the dispute, NWBO had zero manufacturing capacity in the US. Think about what that means. Think about how many things speculated on ihub over the last 6 months were not even remotely possible without MSA.
3) I think that getting a new MSA in place is the most important part of the PR. Without that, nothing moves forward.
Is Jill the short-haired blonde that Bigger was hitting on at the Cayman Islands pack meet?
It didsn't miss your point, just assigned no credibility whatsoever to the attempt at scare tactics. Cofer Black is not some sort of boogie man that is a threat to anyone with a negative opinion of nwbo.
Let me reiterate my offer to meet with Cofer Black and the SEC. He can tell his story, and I'll get to tell mine.
As you note, speculative shorting doesn't make a lot of sense given the current price and borrow cost.
My guess is that most of the short interest is holders of warrants at very low strike prices. They can effectively lock in a profit while deferring any taxable gain. If the stock goes up, they can exercise warrants and deliver those shares to cover. If the stock goes down, forget the warrants and profit via the short.
That's a whole lot of words to totally ignore the point that nwbo has never reported anything from its Special Litigation Committee.
DocLogic, I bet the results of Woodford's investigation are in the same place as the results from nwbo's "Special Litigation Committee" investigation. Of course Woodford has no fiduciary duty to report to nwbo shareholders.
Surely you remember the Committee nwbo announced via PR back in December, 2015.
"NW Bio Announces Establishment of Special Committee And Law Firm To Conduct Independent Investigation of Recent Allegations"
https://nwbio.com/nw-bio-announces-establishment-of-special-committee-and-law-firm-to-conduct-independent-investigation-of-recent-allegations/
Seems to me that Committee has never reported anything. The only mention is that the SEC is interested. From recent 10-K:
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
"As previously reported, the Company has received a number of formal information requests (subpoenas) from the SEC regarding several broad topics that have been previously disclosed, including the Company’s membership on Nasdaq and delisting, related party matters, the Company’s programs, internal controls, the Company’s Special Litigation Committee, disclosures and the publication of interim clinical trial data. Testimony of certain officers and third parties has been taken as well. The Company has been cooperating with the SEC investigation. As hoped, the investigation is winding to a conclusion. After investigation of a broad array of issues over the past two-plus years, the SEC Staff has informed us preliminarily that they have concerns in regard to two issues, relating to the Company’s internal controls over financial reporting and the adequacy of certain disclosures made in the past. We have previously disclosed material weaknesses in our internal controls. As for disclosures, we believe our disclosures complied with applicable law. Despite our belief that the Staff should close the investigation, there can be no assurance that the Staff will not recommend some action involving the Company and/or individuals. Given the stage of the process, the Company is unable to provide a current assessment of the potential outcome or potential liability, if any."
You realize that quora post refers to the current policy, which is not necessarily the same policy that applied many years ago.
If so, then those efforts seem very effective at offsetting the efforts to push nwbo higher. Ex: paying Carlo Rago to promote. That paid promotion is fact, unlike your conjecture in the opposite direction.
It seems to be a price range where buyers and sellers are balanced. In the absense of significant news, stability is not that surprising.
There are a lot of warrants with a $0.35 strike price. Presumably that is well known to holders of lower strike warrants that are now in the money. Not aware of anything else tied to the recent range.
Correct. Passive assets under management are huge, and with wide ranging implications.
Let's tie it to nwbo first, and the cost of no longer being on NASDAQ. I imagine that passive demand for 25m to 50m shares might just nudge the price about $0.34 that seems so hard to pass.
What about governance? Are Vanguard and Blackrock going to be vigilant about holding management accountable? In the same way that active or activist investors would?
One of the key tenets of passive investing is that market prices tend to be accurate. If passive gets too big, the price discovery mechanism starts to fail. Rather ironic that investing based on efficient markets might ultimately render those same markets inefficient.
Blackrock is also a top 3 shareholde for Biogen, Merck, and Bristol Myers.
It has nothing to do with liking health care or that particular company. It is because Blackrock is a top 3 ETF player.
Tocagen is mainly held in:
iShares Russell 2000 ETF 422,207 Mar 30, 2019 1.78% 4,589,390
iShares NASDAQ Biotechnology ETF 236,506 Mar 30, 2019 0.99% 2,570,820
iShares Russell 2000 Growth ETF 159,360 Mar 30, 2019 0.67% 1,732,243
Any of that look like active management? No, all passive. Connecting that to Cognate is nonsense.
And this is not the first time you've heard about Neil Woodford's "error in judgement"
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=139051998
anders2211 Tuesday, 03/06/18 06:39:43 AM
Re: GoodGuyBill post# 161109 0
Post # of 228197
Quote:Neil Woodford’s ‘error of judgement’ US investment now largely written off
http://www.whatinvestment.co.uk/woodfords-error-judgement-investment-largely-written-off-2553221/
Star fund manager Neil Woodford has opened up about his disastrous investment in a US biotech stock.
Quote:
The last contact Woodford had with the company was at the end of 2015, when they were informed that the investigation would take three months. Since then Neil Woodford has had no contact with the company, and no details of the investigation, now almost a year overdue, have emerged.
shame on you NWBO
Woodford has publicly stated that his investment in nwbo was an "error in judgment".
You say this UK sage couldn't possibly fail at due diligence. Well, he has publicly admitted exactly that. Which of course 100% supports my analysis of the events.
Woodford screwed up.
Woodford publicly admitted screwing up.
Believe him instead of constructing some elaborate conspiracy theory.
3.5 years later I think my 2015 read of the situation looks good in light of how the situation has played out so far.
Woodford is a long-only portfolio manager. He is not a vulture investor, private equity, LBO, IBanker, or anything of the sort.
You are claiming with apparent certainty that he would do something for which there is zero precedent in his history, and which is completely outside his competence.
That makes no sense.
Shareholders vote on a resolution to authorize a reverse split, generatlly specifying a range to give management some flexibility. Ex: between 1 for 8 and 1 for 20.
There are two main reasons for a reverse split.
1) Satisfy listing conditions to get back on NASDAQ. This only makes sense if they are ready to satisfy all other conditions for NASDAQ, including the rule they violated twice in one year prior to downlisting.
2) Interest institutional investors. Many institutions have minimum price rules, often around $5 per share, for a variety of reasons. Until nwbo is fully ready for institutional investment, this doesn't matter so much.
- Can they present a meaningful investment thesis, which obviously means far more than the current blended/blinded story?
- Are they ready to communicate like a real company, including quarterly conference calls?
Please re-think the timing. When Woodford changed his SEC filing to activist, nwbo was still trading for several dollars.
I agree with you that he was shocked, but I believe the source was US governance (or lack thereof) and self-dealing (related party transactions).
If you want to believe that shorting pushed nwbo stock down, that's fine, but that came well after Woodford's activist filing.
Not going to deal with that whole rant, but I do note that you are the first one to drag Phase V into the thread.
I think one significant Woodford mistake was very early. Given the magnitude of his investment, he should have insisted on a board seat up front. That would have prevented much of the mess that came later.
Woodford admitted to making a mistake with nwbo. That's pretty unusual for someone in his position. When someone who could be arrogant turns humble, I'm inclined to believe him.
So yes, I find due diligence failure entirely believable, and any thought of a Woodford takeover ridiculous.
The idea of a Woodford takeover is fantasy. He has zero history of taking over companies, and no experience operating a biotech.
Please re-think if that is part of your understanding, because it makes no sense whatsoever.
How was it that Woodford later referred to that investment? Did he say "error in judgment" or something similar?
I think he was blindsided by the related-party transactions. That's an inexcusable failure of due diligence, especially given the amount he invested.
As a generic answer, that's ok, but it ignores the single most important factor in the nwbo MFN situation.
The nwbo/Cognate MFN was between two companies controlled by the same person!! That is an incestuous situation, and fully deserved every bit of criticism it received.
What are the sources?
Maybe I missed the context not reading every post, but didn't see anything about it. Two different sources? Same source for different years?
Seems fairly obvious it is either a definition change or bad data. Either way, ingoring it is a good strategy.
Yes, but that is not the decision the FDA faces, as you well know.
IHUB loves to dump on Optune, but often leaves out the fact that medical devices follow a different and easier route to approval.
dcvax being better than Optune is not the route to approval. There is certainly an argument as to whether than should be the case, but investors have to deal with FDA reality as it is.
Another thing to remember is that Optune's approval was as a medical device, so not a direct comparable for a biologic.
Your post is fine. The email about your post was different. Odd.
I don't see your typing real time. The wolfpack keylogger software reports with an annoying lag. :)
First version you said started in November, 2019.
flipper44 has replied to a post you made on NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc. on Investors Hub:
They started the rereview of progression events back in November 2019. The crossover has been known for the length of the trial. The statement is simply attempting to explain why they've been taking so long. IMO, they are just trying to mature the data further, and they've always had their own internal timeline. Comes as no surprise to them, imo.
To VIEW or REPLY TO this message, click the link below:
I wonder if your date typo turns out to be predictive.