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techisbest, check MSFT or HAL on both charts. I think 3 cents stocks may not track well.
I'm waiting until the end of the week on TDYH since they probably won't PR until next week. Got some dry powder from CMGI, sold just before the close, finally got my timing right!
Watch CMGI pop tomorrow on some fantastic news! LOL!
tenzzi, I reread my post and now I'm confused too! Try reading it backwards, LOL!
Another talk show PR, has Weiner been scheduled for Oprah yet?
tenzzi, if we were totally "free" we wouldn't group together on message boards to look for support from others for our decisions. That is why "Bashers" are attacked so much on pump and dump stocks when they are running up because they are not conforming to the group. It's been done to me, and I have done it to others, I'm sad to say.
Some of the free opinions have been right on the money, others not so good. I guess one would have to check past posts to see who hit the nails on the heads and whose "free" opinions are worth listening to.
OT: sambeaux, "Oil Storm" is a ficticious TV show.
Posted on Fri, Jun. 03, 2005
Greasy drama waters down ‘Oil Storm’
By AARON BARNHART
The Kansas City Star
“Oil Storm” (7 p.m. Sunday, FX). Imagine: It’s late 2005, and America’s gas and oil supply is cut off. A huge hurricane takes out Louisiana. Terrorists attack Saudi Arabia. Icy storms rock New England. Tankers go boom. We lose a bidding war with the Chinese. Suddenly, light sweet crude is more precious than extra virgin olive. Think $52 a barrel for oil is too high? Hah! Try $152. Fill up your SUV? That’ll be 200 bucks, you greedy, greedy consumer.
All this takes place on the current president’s watch, we’re told. So where is the president? More importantly — where’s the vice president?
That’s what’s screwy about “Oil Storm.” Although made to look like a “Frontline” special, mentions of Bush and Cheney are more scarce than petrol in this movie. We see the Saudi royal family and Russian president Vladimir Putin, but there’s no risk in showing them.
Nuclear fusion? Drilling in Alaska? Cheney’s energy task force? They don’t figure in “Oil Storm,” which chickens out just when it’s getting interesting. Instead of delving into the causes of the oil crisis, it revolves around two families that are in this movie to represent All Our Pain.
One family runs a gas station in Texas and enjoys taking shaky home videos of themselves (so much for the “Frontline” look). The other runs a farm in South Dakota and is hit hard when, in response to the fuel shortage, Congress ends the agricultural subsidy program.
Leaving aside what a silly storyline that is, do the Brits who made “Oil Storm” realize that most farming in America is carried out by corporations that hire expensive lobbyists, just like the oil companies?
The producers of “Oil Storm” also do historical simulation shows for PBS, such as “Colonial House.” They’re better at that than they are at simulating the future.
“Entourage” and “The Comeback” (8 and 8:30 p.m. Sunday, HBO). It’s season two for “Entourage,” the comedy that gave HBO a testosterone kick last summer.
We find the career of Vince (Adrian Grenier), rising Hollywood star, inching forward. He’s forced to move out of last season’s rental, so he decides to buy a home.
Meanwhile, Drama (Kevin Dillon) begs Vince’s agent, Ari (Jeremy Piven), to get him reinstated at the Playboy Mansion. When he can’t, manager Eric (Kevin Connolly) fumes, “You know, Ari, you carry about as much weight as Lara Flynn Boyle.” A punch line like that is worth putting all those proper nouns in the paper.
That’s followed by “The Comeback,” in which Lisa Kudrow plays a faded sitcom star who agrees to let reality-TV cameras follow her around as she attempts a return to the small screen. Norma Desmond meets “The Office,” if that makes any sense.
I’m not a big fan of these improvised docu-style comedies, and “Comeback” is no exception. But I find most HBO shows take some getting used to.
TV Barn’s TV Picks: One of cable’s big hits from last summer, “The 4400,” is back beginning at 8 p.m. Sunday on USA.
Like a lot of sci-fi shows, it offers a catchy premise and a lot of dopey lines. “I deal in facts,” says one of the 4400, “and the fact is I’ve gotta flush this radiator before lunch!”
The two-hour pilot from last season airs at noon Sunday.
Based on an America Online poll, that ever-reliable gauge of public sentiment, Matt Lauer will announce who is “The Greatest American” at 7 p.m. Sunday on Discovery.
TDYH, keep in mind only 2 million float and average daily volume is very low. If they are telling us the truth about their future plans, the daily low volume trading doesn't mean much, IMO, other than a chance to add a few shares when a few impatient sellers leave.
Any one watch "Oil Storm"? Maybe a renewed interest in alternative energy could be a result. Not far from fiction to nonfiction regarding possible oil shortages, IMO.
One rounds off the pps to two places, the other uses three places, maybe.
villebout, thanks, GLTY too this week.
techisbest, you are kidding, right? I think you will find the money flow down the drain for investors, and a nice flow of money to management.
villebout, re: AMGJ, is there any way to tell if the company is selling shares? That usually skews the money flow and accumulation on the charts if the buying is just soaking up the dilution. They show 130 million shares OS at Pink Sheets, but no filings available to tract the dilution, if any. Do you have any more info on the OS or dilution? TIA.
Anyone "playing" CMGI? Been buying under $2, earnings out Monday after close. Not sure if earnings will be all that great, may sell most Monday and hang on to a few shares in case earnings "great".
Snap Hook, you are right! Duh....
Might be $2 on Monday, PR needed to stop the bleeding. Big drop at the close. I wonder if the MM's picked up some stop loss orders?
My low-ball didn't get filled. Check tomorrow for the "action".
Estimated_Prophet, sure, don't buy any NYSE, Nas, or Amex listed stocks! LOL!
By: palacian
02 Jun 2005, 07:37 AM EDT
Msg. 55451 of 55477
Jump to msg. #
allow me
start the morning off right.
sent this query to scottrade:
what does this statement mean? As of February 28, 2005, we had outstanding 74,317,832 shares of our common
stock which were held by approximately 325 stockholders of record. am i a shareholder of record if i own shares in this company?
their response:
Thank you for your e-mail. On the record date, a company looks to see who its shareholders or "holders of record" are. Essentially, a date of record ensures the dividend checks get sent to the right people. If you owned them on February 28, 2005, yes you were a shareholder of record.
also sent the query to biph.
will report when i get a response.
pal
palacian, you are sooooo right!
Waitedg, I won't be buying a whole lot. I'll be out most of the day and will put in a low ball order just to see if any more nervous nellies continue selling. Still low volume considering 2 million shares out there, let's see if the longs jump in quickly or not and drive the pps back up.
Big Red Flag! Big waste of money, why???? From today's PR and paid pump:
"Biophan Technologies pays Trilogy $12,500 per month for so long as Trilogy is retained to provide investor relations services. A subsidiary of Trilogy has entered into an agreement with a non-affiliate shareholder of this company to purchase from the shareholder 880,000 shares at $.80 per share and 4,180,000 shares at $2.00 per share at such time as the shareholder has purchased the shares from by this company at the same prices. The shareholder is obligated to purchase these shares only if this company has registered the shareholder's resale of the shares under the Securities Act of 1933 and certain other conditions are satisfied."
stephQB, well if they really don't know how many shareholders they have, it's kinda dumb to put a figure in the filing! LOL!
Grand conspiracy
Of course, you can't talk about market manipulation without at least bringing up a fear harbored by a (hopefully) small minority of investors -- that the entire game is rigged. Conspiracy theories abound, and everyone from the Federal Reserve to the Masons to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (just kidding) has been implicated as the "they" that are secretly pulling the strings behind the scenes.
The big run-up in tech stocks in the '90s? It was "they." The nasty crash that wiped out so much money among individual investors? "They" again. Sometimes the conspiracies are even a bit more elaborate -- such as the one I found online that suggests that "they" took their winnings from the late '90s tech run and used it to buy all sorts of mines, refineries, wells, and whatnot before instigating the recent commodity run.
"Balderdash" is the only word I can think of to describe these "theories" -- or at least it's the only word that my editors will let me use. If you really believe that nonsense, you need to do two things right away. First, sell all of your stocks (why play a rigged game?). Second, install heavy-duty padding on your walls and floors because you could really hurt yourself.
Rest of the article on manipulation:
http://biz.yahoo.com/fool/050601/111764098701.html
Good article on analysts:
Analysts Running Scared
Recently, none other than their hometown newspaper, "The Wall Street Journal," depicted Wall Street analysts as the proverbial "gang that couldn't shoot straight." When analysts say "buy," the object of their affection tanks. When they say "sell," it's up, up, and away. It gets a Fool to wonder: Is all of Wall Street just one big contrarian indicator?
By Rich Smith
June 1, 2005
By now, it should be news to no one that Wall Street analysts were hopeless romantics in the 1990s. Smitten with tech-stock love, they fell head over heels for unrealistic growth expectations, "eyeball"-based business models, and all things dot-com.
When the bubble burst in early 2000, these love-struck analysts were caught with their analytical pants down. As tech stocks plunged from stratosphere to lithosphere, a whopping 95% of all equity issues then trading on the public markets were totally free of any "sell" ratings. What's more, according to investment research firm Zacks, the 5% of stocks that did have a sell rating had exactly that: one sell rating. Every analyst in the country, with the exception of a single lone crank, refused to cast doubt on these most doubtfully priced of companies.
And then what happened?
Corning (NYSE: GLW): down 85%.
CMGI (Nasdaq: CMGI): down 99%.
Commerce One (OTC BB: CMRCQ): down 100%.
Things change yet remain the same
After the bubble's "pop," a new trend emerged. Stock analysts began to reverse themselves, advising investors to sell what was left of their stocks.
And so the stocks began to rise.
In fact, in every single year of the new millennium, stocks rated "sell" by Wall Street have outperformed stocks rated "buy" or "hold." Over the past four years, stocks that the Street has been telling you to sell have risen 19% per annum on average. Meanwhile, the "buys" and "holds" have risen just 7%.
So is Wall Street just stupid?
No. On the contrary, the analysts working on the Street are pretty bright guys -- but that doesn't necessarily work to your advantage.
You see, just because a sell-side analyst believes a stock is a dud, that doesn't necessarily mean he's going to clue you in to this fact. Think back to that 2002 TV ad from Charles Schwab, where the pinstriped broker tells his analyst: "Let's put some lipstick on this pig!" That's how the game was played pre-millennium. Analysts might have had private reservations -- heck, they might have had a private case of the giggles -- about the prospects for a stock. But that certainly didn't mean they were going to rate it a "sell."
Remember, these people have commissions to earn. And they don't make commissions by telling people who don't own a stock that they shouldn't own it. They make commissions by telling people who don't own a stock that they need to buy one right now.
And of course, if their private belief that the company is doomed turns out to be right, there's plenty of time down the road to make a second commission by opining that the circumstances have now changed, and it's time to sell that stock that they told you to buy three months ago.
Gurus gone mild
But the desire to make sales and earn commissions is only half the story. The other reason that Wall Street analysts tend to make bad calls in public -- even when they're right in private -- derives from the fact that they are (not to put too fine a point on it) a bunch of desk-bound, paycheck-driven bureaucrats.
Try to look at life from the other side of the analyst's desk for a moment, and you'll see what I'm getting at. Let's say that five years ago, an analyst had to make a decision between recommending perennial tech favorite Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) or ho-hum faucet maker American Standard (NYSE: ASD) -- a supposedly stable consumer stock that hadn't gained a penny in value over the past three years. It was a basket case of a business bereft of respect and spurned by most of Wall Street.
At the time, few people suspected that the next five years would see Sun lose almost its entire market cap, while American Standard tripled in value. And of those analysts who did see the potential for riches in kitchens, few were willing to bet their jobs on it.
Herd mentality
To see why that's so, let's turn for a moment to legendary investor and former head of the Fidelity Magellan Fund Peter Lynch. He summed up Wall Street analysts' thinking on questions such as the Sun/Standard dilemma thusly: "Success is one thing, but it's more important not to look bad if you fail."
Sure, an analyst could have made his clients a lot of money by seeing the value inside American Standard, the potential for outsized returns just waiting to be unlocked. But what if the analyst was wrong? When all of your colleagues are pointing out a company's problems, do you go out on a limb and say: "I beg to differ?" Probably not. Because if you're wrong, you'll be begging, all right -- begging for your job.
Now contrast that with what happens when an analyst puts a "buy" recommendation on a stock such as Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) -- a company that currently sports 21 "buys" and seven "holds," but not a single "sell." If everyone is sure that a stock will go up, and it does, it's all good. On the other hand, if the stock somehow tanks, everyone just gasps in mock amazement: "Wow. Yahoo! really made a mess of things."
See the change in emphasis? If an analyst's right in a crowd, he's just right. But if he's wrong in a crowd, the analyst -- and everyone else who was wrong along with him -- chants in unison: "We didn't do anything wrong. The company screwed up."
Thus, analysts have learned that there's safety in numbers. It's the cow that wanders from the herd that gets eaten by wolves (or thrown to them by an irate mutual fund manager). But as long as the analyst sticks with the rest of the cattle, it doesn't much matter whether the herd's moving in the right direction or the wrong -- the analyst's job is safe.
Be the cowboy, not the cow
As an individual investor, however, you don't have to be part of the herd. Like a cowboy circling on the outside, you can watch as the cows shamble to and fro, yet move independently yourself. When the analysts are all chanting "buy, buy" and charging toward a cliff, you can just step out of the way. And when they're bellowing "sell, sell" and rushing off to greener pastures on the other side of some fence, you can wait until they're gone and examine what they're leaving behind. Could be that you'll find it right tasty.
Now mind you, any pasture that the analyst herd is so eager to leave is probably laden with certain, er, landmines. So you do want to watch your step as you go a-grazing. That's where our research team at the Motley Fool Inside Value newsletter service can help. They're adept at picking their way through well-used fields of abandoned stocks, locating and avoiding the landmines, and finding tasty treats such as recent Inside Value pick Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO). In fact, since the newsletter first began running less than one year ago, it has already found more than a dozen such winning stocks for subscribers.
For a peek at the treasures Inside Value has already turned up, join us for a free one-month trial by clicking here.
This article was originally published on April 28, 2005. It has been updated.
Fool contributor Rich Smith has no position in any of the companies mentioned in this article. The value of The Motley Fool's disclosure policy is a definite "buy."
Here ya go:
What shorters? Do you have any proof of that? Getting off the Berlin exchange didn't do anything for the pps. I think you confuse shorting with lack of performance when it relates to the pps. Company stock prices do tend to go down when they always lose money every quarter for years.
bike2work, thanks for the info. Oil back up, I may have to take advantage of the fire sale if it continues tomorrow.
needy, did you get those shares? The loan approval is a bit late, was expected mid-May. An update PR would be nice.
Yeah, I bet those boys cry in their steaks and lobster tails every night in frustration.
All buys so far today. eom.
TRCPA, Honeywell was mentioned in many of the FASC SEC filings, that didn't mean squat. I doubt the SEC even reads the FASC filings let alone compare each to previous filings, so much for an "oversight body". That's like saying the NYC police dept. will protect you at all times when you visit NYC.
I hope the "fourth contract signed awaiting deposit" isn't with Honeywell! Pay attention to the pps, the market will let you know what the FASC "potential" is all about even before you read the next filing! LOL!
Setonian, it's your turn to call, or is it Net Man's?
terry, I think you are wrong about the shares held by your broker as not being counted. In fact, if you have several accounts, joint, IRA's, SEP's, you may be counted as a shareholder several times. Companies know how many annual reports or proxies to send to Fidelity for instance to pass on to shareholders. Sometimes I get 2-3 annual reports/proxies for the same company if I own shares in several accounts. I also deal with three brokers, which can also make me a multiple shareholder. I think the error would more to the high side for number of shareholders.
Number of shareholders went down from last year's 10K? That's hard to believe unless profit taking lost some.
As of February 29, 2004, we had outstanding 65,945,011 shares of our common stock which were held by approximately 360 stockholders of record.
As of February 28, 2005, we had outstanding 74,317,832 shares of our common stock which were held by approximately 325 stockholders of record.
b9molecule, $30 million from sale of stock? WOW! LOL! What I quoted is "not generated any material revenues", I guss that's "boilerplate" for most OTC's. This is a sucker play for anyone holding long term, IMO. That's why the insiders are all lined up to sell and none are buying.
OT: TRCPA, if you have 4 or 5 free hours, read the BIPH 10K. I think it has truely raised the bar for other OTC companies.
Of the 12 employees, at least 11 must have worked full time on it, IMO, for at least 6 months! LOL! The only "fact" that really stands out to me is:
The Company has not generated any material revenues throughout its history. The Company's ability to continue in business is dependent upon obtaining sufficient financing or attaining future profitable operations.
I think FASC has more sales than BIPH!
Trying to read through the 10K, it should at least get an award for the biggest BS filing in the history of the OTC! It's 99.9% forward looking statements, IMO. At least the "potentials" listed should give it years of pumping. JMO, and I admit I'm very cynical of OTC companies.
This is the only statement that says it all, IMO:
The Company has not generated any material revenues throughout its history. The Company's ability to continue in business is dependent upon obtaining sufficient financing or attaining future profitable operations.
The pps has concrete shoes, and the water is DEEP! LOL!
terry, just joking, but you know paid pumpers and bashers are everywhere! LOL!