Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Morning all. Daily reminder cutting through the blind optimism that as your dollars continue disappearing, the company continues its pattern of underinforming and/or misleading investors and spending money on activities that have shown, time and again, to offer no lasting value. A baseless theory that the company is a participant in our largest holders' years-long short manipulation scheme continues to fit the history and facts better than the baseless dream of buyout being pushed by certain individuals that are feeding you a delicious plate of high-hope, rationale-free ideas.
Advaxis. Where are the results. Where is our money. Your investors deserve answers.
I'm neither for nor against the idea that it rests solely on DOC. The company is to thank for that due to their lack of transparency.
I think one should keep in mind that while DOC was the talking head, there's an entire board that should be and should have been weighing in on at least SOME of the decisions that got us here, and they are at least partly accountable.
We don't know what the dynamic was between DOC and the board, or between the board and the largest holders, or between DOC and the largest holders. Everyone is quick to blame DOC but it's just as possible that the board/holders had been strong arming DOC and forcing him to continue behaving in a deceptive and shareholder-unfriendly manner to further the manipulation strategy. Maybe one particular demand was the final straw and DOC had had enough and took his leave.
A little transparency goes a long way towards stopping outrageous-sounding conspiracy theories. In the absence of transparency, well, there you go.
I know you're just trying to goad me into wasting posts so there's one less daily post I can use to call attention to your employer's disgusting strategy. But I like to have fun and I don't think I need all 15 to get my point across, so I'll bite.
Here dude, this is specific to ADXS:
They've been touting these conferences for years and it's been a non-event. Every. Single. Time. Enough is enough. Try something new. ANYTHING.
And I'm not even factoring in that the past few conferences in particular have been exceptionally underwhelming as far as new substance.
Hi mp, thanks for a level-headed post. I'm sure everyone here understands science takes time to come to fruition, but the fruits of execution and management are a running calculation with variables that can be adjusted much more easily. The company is doing an extremely poor job of adhering to their fiduciary responsibilities. I've explained why I think so elsewhere, so I'll leave it at that.
I'd lay money that those 100k shares from yesterday are in the process of being dropped in already this morning, as I hypothesized. Look for a bounce around 6.25, since that's where the purchase occurred.
I wouldn't lay that much money though, since I've already bet too much on this horse. Yeah, yeah, I'm lying and I'm short so I haven't bet anything. Can it. What's life if you can't make a joke even during the cruddy times.
Nope, you seem to be having a chicken and egg misunderstanding of what I'm saying.
The company should engage in activities that are likely to affect share price in a positive way. That is what fiduciary duty IS. Continuing to engage in activities that have shown to be a waste of airfare, hotel stays, blah blah blah, that haven't produced a return on the money invested is a breach of that duty. If conferences produce positive outcomes, then go to conferences. If they don't, then stop. The company has a responsibility to shareholders, not to random conference attendees. Random conference attendees can go pound sand.
So don't present at a conference. Again, it's not been effective so why continue doing it? Are they or are they not interested in raising capital for operations? Hype is how you do that. This is not generating any hype and thus not generating any excitement and thus not making it any easier to generate capital.
Again, they must know this. There are numerous data points over the last several years that show it to be 100% consistent. So again, why?
That's absolutely fine if you don't agree. I'm equally frustrated, hence why I'm here and not lurking like I have been for years. The company's handling of investor relations throughout all of 2017 has been utterly outrageous and completely unacceptable. My hope is that more of you acknowledge and accept that. Like I said yesterday, we need to make noise, and a lot of it.
Advaxis, your investors deserve meaningful answers. Even a freakin' "hello". Absurd.
Exactly. The company ABSOLUTELY MUST realize this if we also realize it. So WHY do they continue doing it?
I have a theory for you if you're interested in the answer, but I'm sure you've seen it by now.
Yes, I do have an issue with it. I'll be the first to say I'm here for returns, not for medicine. If the medicine is great and helps people, that's really, really great and I'm happy to have taken part. But let's not kid ourselves -- we could go down to a charity and donate our money if that's what we wanted to do.
They've been touting these conferences for years and it's been a non-event. Every. Single. Time. Enough is enough. Try something new. ANYTHING.
And I'm not even factoring in that the past few conferences in particular have been exceptionally underwhelming as far as new substance.
Morning everyone. I see another bone has been thrown to the retail base to keep us "patient" and waiting another several months while the status quo remains unchanged.
Advaxis. Where are the results. Where is our money.
Not sure why everyone gets so hung up on that fact. That's what makes it a theory, just like all the other theories floating around. It's just a bad news theory, and nobody likes it and nobody wants to accept it because it's a downer. That, however, doesn't make it any less possibly true.
I don't like it either. But I'd rather make a stink about what's happening and try to hold the company to their fiduciary duty than sit here and continue taking it in the rear.
Last post of the day, so don't expect anything more from me. I'm sure that'll make a couple of you happy, at least.
There's no hope to it. They agreed to covering via shelf years ago, then bought enough of the company to establish an iron grip on where it goes. That's what makes it a plan.
It's a thinly traded stock. It's trivial to kill every rally and break every support when nobody wants to touch it with a 10 foot pole. Periodically let the stock rally with shares gained at price x, then crush it to expand the short position at a higher level, y. Pocket the difference between x and y plus some new short shares. Wait for the price to bleed after the expansion has spooked potential buyers, then buy back at z (which is less than x). Rinse, repeat.
Amgen, the "best-ever P2 results", Sellas, all used exclusively to expand the short position and trap buyers.
Tell the company to start messing up every IR/PR thing imaginable and to put out limp noodle press releases, kick out the CEO using Investor Day and the shareholder vote crocodile tears as a thinly veiled excuse, and turn the company into a black box for almost two quarters until Q3 earnings (per IR). Wait for the silence and uncertainty itself to bring the price down in an "organic-looking" way, then use the shelf. The company uses the excuse that it's cash-starved and gets $50M, the shorts cover, and they all emerge richer at our expense.
After that? I really have no idea.
Did you miss what I said about 504 trading days over 2 years? They've had the option. They haven't taken it.
Thanks for passing it along to them though, if you really did. In the off-chance that there is some credence to it, I hope it either spooks them sufficiently to screw it up or spooks them into being more forthcoming with investors. Maybe too little, too late, though.
Regarding your frustration with me: take note that I've never said I WANT my theory to be true. I'm just providing a frame that connects the many dots we have, and it happens to run counter to the equally baseless good-news theories.
Sorry, no. Just today there was a single 100k volume candle. There have been tons of outlier high-volume candles that have almost universally been green, and they clearly haven't gone towards reducing the short interest. The idea that there would be insufficient shares over a significantly long period of time to cover at 10-20k per day over THE FULL TRADING DAY is a total fantasy. That movement wouldn't even be a blip against the overall trend, plus they can continue ping-ponging the price up and down with only minimal volume, pushing one end more than the other as needed to manipulate the trend and minimize the monetary effort required while maximizing the net gain. And so they end up with more resources, which are then channeled back in to do it all over again with even more leeway/potency.
Just look at the chart this morning -- price dropped by nearly 15 cents with a movement of only ~2000 shares. Then a 100k buy out of nowhere that didn't even budge the price. I'm sure you'll soon see those 100k shares beating down the door towards $5.
If they wanted to cover, they could. But they don't, because they have a plan.
Still doesn't explain why there's been no covering over time. Why churn it at all if you're not going to sneak bites from the volume you're inducing?
A criminal conspiracy is never ludicrous. They happen all the time. Sometimes they get away with it and you're powerless to stop it. Sometimes they don't and you hear about it on the news. Sometimes they're perpetrated by organized crime. There are people and organizations that exist solely for this kind of thing, because it's lucrative. To say that it's ludicrous is in fact ludicrous.
The "shorts are stuck" theory is more of the same blind hope that has paralyzed the retail base underwater with no ability to assess whether or not it's time to eat the loss and and run because the company is not being honest with us. Wake up. We need to make noise, and a lot of it.
I fail to see how that's a better explanation because you would see the short position unwinding as the price has continued its descent. You could cover 20,000 shares per day, a pittance compared to the daily volume, every single day for the last two years or 504 trading days, and have completely unwound 10M shares. They've had plenty of chances to dig themselves out of this hole you believe they're in. They haven't, and they haven't even tried.
Edited because maths: 252 x 2 = 504, not 454. Doesn't change the 20,000 figure though since I rounded anyway.
I looked into it a little more and I can't back up the claim to my satisfaction, so I withdraw that portion. I was basing my claim on the 2 30-day notification periods and how Advaxis' clinical hold wasn't resolved until 70 calendar days after. Some comparisons I had in mind were Aduro's hold, resolved within 30, and one of Juno's holds resolved within single digit days. While I can't seem to find any statistics on the average duration of holds, I also found cases of it running longer than 2 months for various reasons, so I concede this.
Agreed, it's about money first, and a few people stand to make a lot of it here on both the short and long sides.
I hear what you're saying, but the way events went down doesn't seem to make much sense to me and so I think there's more going on than meets the eye. I'm not talking just about Investor Day, but going back at least as far as the Amgen deal last year.
Recall the situation at the time. About 8.18M shares were sold short going into August 1st. That number turned into 9.72M shares sold short on August 15th. Interesting that ever since then, that number has never breached 10M by more than a small margin.
Recall that a dilutive event occurred at the same time that made little sense to everyone. Recall the repeated bungling of IR and PR since then and the lack of effort by the company to present investors with guidance.
Recall that DOC "broke promises" to major players before, which we don't know much about. Recall also that DOC sealed the $50M shelf and then left almost immediately, taking a fat chunk of change on the way out.
Arrange the puzzle pieces in some bizarre ways, and it starts looking like maybe DOC wasn't playing ball as demanded and was asked to leave and given a bribe for his troubles.
Good, that should be the takeaway. Because I know nothing, and you know nothing (or do you?), and supposing grandiose buyouts and deals like they're givens while having virtually no information is disingenuous at best and may cost good people money and stress.
That's also the nature of a "theory". I completely accept that I could be wrong, but I have increasing confidence that while not every detail may be correct, I'm more right than I am wrong.
I say we don't know enough to make the call about whether or not it's too unethical or illegal. DOC could have been ousted for resisting this plan, for all we know. We think that DOC pushed through his comp packages, etc., because he's the big bad wolf but for all we know the board instructed him to do so and his hands were tied.
I find it hard to believe a company's investor and public relations could be so poor by accident. There's something to be said about not pumping your stock, but they're barely trying even with pumpworthy news items.
Also to your point of ethical and legal behavior, I think it's shortsighted to assume the board has no part. What's the old saying about birds of a feather?
Also my theory provides a possible explanation for the concern in your last paragraph. If the shorts' strategy is to cover 10M around $5 using the shelf, then they can't risk running it up too much or it could get away from them strongly enough that they would need to add more shorted shares and thus take on more risk. The assumption is that they have absolutely no risk at the 10M level because they can expect to largely cover that in an offering.
In the meantime, we get these +/-5% swing days and days where it inexplicably runs 5+% only to inexplicably bleed all gains over the next several days. Their perspective is probably that pennies aren't as good as dollars but hey, they're better than nothing.
FWIW I took a look at failure to deliver data for ADXS a month or two ago (it's publicly available and from my limited understanding serves as a measurement of the level of naked shorting) and while there were some failures, it was not nearly enough to indicate that naked shorting is playing a large role here.
Why are people so adamant about giving the buyout theory so much thought with no reliable evidence other than a single hire? This isn't any different.
I'm sorry, but the status quo is FUD by nature and I'm not doing a single thing to exacerbate it:
Fear - a CEO is gone and the company isn't saying anything, which could be good, could be bad, means your investment is possibly toast
Uncertainty - a CEO is gone and the company isn't saying anything, which is supremely uncertain
Doubt - a CEO is gone without explanation, the company isn't saying anything
If anything, I'm trying to reduce the FUD by framing it in a potential scenario. The scenario isn't even that terrible aside from implying a temporary blip to $5 which will almost certainly rebound very strongly if true.
One post left after this one, so I'll be saving it in case something really cool appears. A lot better than three, though.
The clueless don't need scaring, man. Have you not been watching the ticker for the last 2 years? Giving it some thought costs you nothing. Providing a sound argument to refute it would give you more peace of mind than having it floating around out there. Don't you care about your investment enough to consider all avenues? You're only hurting yourself if you don't, and hurting everyone in the same boat by perpetuating inaction.
This is why I think certain self-professed longs have been planted among the true longs, ages ago. Build up a rapport with the community, then everyone assumes certain people are always right. Ideas that might cast light on what's really happening are discounted immediately to keep everyone off the scent. Is that so hard to fathom?
Excellent, thanks. I suppose I didn't hit the right combination of words since they're all pretty general, i.e. "short" "offering", blah blah blah.
This footnote on the second page is interesting regarding this particular regulation, which seems to indicate that the regulation doesn't apply since the position has been open for a significant amount of time:
The Rule 105 restricted period is typically the period beginning five days before the pricing of the offered
securities and ending with such pricing. Specifically, Rule 105(a) provides as follows: In connection with an
offering of equity securities for cash pursuant to a registration statement or notification on Form 1-A or Form
1-E filed under the Securities Act of 1933 (“offered securities”), it shall be unlawful for any person to sell short
(as defined in Rule 200(a) of Regulation SHO) the security that is the subject of the offering and purchase the
offered securities from an underwriter or broker or dealer participating in the offering if such short sale was
effected during the period (“Rule 105 restricted period”) that is the shorter of the period: (1) Beginning five
business days before the pricing of the offered securities and ending with such pricing; or (2) Beginning with
the initial filing of such registration statement or notification on Form 1-A or Form 1-E and ending with the
pricing. 17 CFR 242.105(a).
It's also peppered with "ifs" and exceptions...
Sorry ig, that it would require a criminal conspiracy isn't a convincing argument to me because criminal conspiracies happen all the time the world over. Ultimately the fact is that you're hoping that there's no criminal conspiracy, but sadly hope is all it is and history tells a different story.
Thanks Dew, this is along the lines of what I'm looking for. Do you know which regs specifically, or of any keywords that might help in searching for those regs and interesting cases of those regs in action? Everything I can think of returns hits that aren't quite what I'm looking for or are too vaguely defined to tell.
You don't have to if you don't want to. Others might disagree. But I dare say it's shortsighted to discount it right away just because it runs counter to everything everyone believes.
The best strategy to execute when it comes to anything is overwhelmingly the strategy that nobody expects. Clearly, this would be unexpected.
I'm not challenging anyone to prove anything for the simple fact that we can't prove anything. The same reason I can't provide you the proof you ask for and the same reason nobody can prove any of the buyout theories or DOC theories.
I'm looking for a convincing argument that minimizes the chance that my theory is true. I've presented a theory to be happily picked apart by anyone who is compelled by the theory and interested enough to do so, such that we might take something useful away from it that we can use either in this ticker or in the future in others. Like I said in another post, it's a discussion board -- not a facts-only board.
While you're correct on the implication, the important takeaway from my theory is that the shorts are actually the longs. Sure, Adage claims not to short and lends their shares out, but who's to say they aren't lending them out to a buddy or even shorting it themselves under another name to make a few bucks while waiting for a payoff?
Stranger things have happened. Look at the story of Dendreon for a glimpse into how interconnected these firms are. Not at all implausible.
Convince me otherwise, please. I would love to be wrong on this. As I said in a previous post I've changed stances before when presented with a sound argument. Otherwise it remains an unproven idea that should be explored just like the unproven idea of a buyout and the unproven ideas of why DOC left.
It's a discussion board, and you seem to be a moderator. Immediately discounting ideas that could have merit doesn't look good as a facilitation of discussion. At least you haven't deleted it (yet) and I appreciate that, unlike some messages of mine that were deleted a few days ago for being very debatably off-topic.
Simple: it's hard to build up your short position to get it unwound for cheap by the company when nobody's buying on the other end and the price is dropping like a rock. It needs to stay above a certain amount otherwise the agreement between the short entity and the company that simultaneously guarantees the company $50M and wipes the short slate clean would break down. A little hope here, a little hope there, and there's your 10M short shares with the price still above $5.
It could be institutional activism, just as easily it could not be. We have no visibility into their machinations. Blindly believing that it was is taking the easy way out simply because it conveniently fits the narrative. I'm talking about activism on the retail side here, not just institutional.
No -- just a realist, someone who believes more is going on than meets the eye, and someone who is fatigued and frustrated with the endless feedback loop of hope that's keeping the retail base paralyzed while the rug continues being pulled out. Nobody should be happy with the status quo as it stands.
Am I right in thinking that institutionally held shares have been decreasing? I can't check at the moment. But that means retail shares are increasing and thus retail power is increasing. Maybe a part of me just wants to beat some sense into everyone in the hopes that some kind of activist flame ignites.
They've been covering for years now according to some here. It's the same old delusional song and dance that has been stringing everyone along for years. "It'll be this month!" "It'll be next month!" "The next 6 months are going to be great!" "Sometime in the next 3 months, earthshattering news!" Enough with that, it's time to come to grips with the reality that the shorts are here to stay and to think of ways to capitalize on it instead, or simply to go away until this all plays out if you have confidence in the science.
Again I think the shelf is going to go to the shorts once the price bleeds closer to $5, and only afterward will there be a meaningful recovery. Am I going to put my money where my mouth is? No, I'm not enough of a risk taker. But it should still be an idea that's in the back of peoples' minds instead of cheering each other on all day.
It'll take time to bleed to that point, hence the silence and uncertainty. Why else would they want to wait Q3 earnings (per IR per a post last week) before providing a meaningful update on the situation? It would be unlikely (though not impossible) that they've selected a specific update date if a material event is in progress because it would mean holding material news beyond the SEC regulated timeframe. Not that I think the regulations mean squat when there's no easy way to see what's going on on the inside, though.
If true this usage of the shelf also means that the idea of a buyout in progress is a pipe dream. The company wouldn't be concerned about raising money otherwise.
Yes, for the better part of 2016 I had a suspicion that might be the case, but somebody else brought it up and a certain response whose content I don't entirely recall convincingly ruled it out for me. It had something to do with BPs not being known to engage in that kind of activity and the outsized risk it carried for them to do so -- better fish to fry, I suppose.
One theory I did appreciate in recent memory was the possibility of the company being bought cheap by the short entity, taken private for the remainder of AIM2CERV, and resold to a BP for the billions we so crave. Effectively giving us the short (heh) end of the stick with only a 3-4 bagger for all our waiting and moaning while the short makes off with the rest.
That's an obvious "truth", but since when did something being illegal stop anyone from doing anything?
Given the story of Dendreon and countless others, I wouldn't put anything past anyone and I've come to fully expect that the odds of illegal machinations being present in any given ticker are higher than the odds of their absence. That's just my own cynical opinion, of course, but it runs parallel to the common knowledge that Wall Street is replete with con-men and thieves looking to steal your stash using any number of unsavory tactics.
That's not quite what I'm saying.
What I'm saying boils down to that no good news at all will hit until after the completion of a ~10M placement to the shorts directly at a price of roughly $5, which allows the company to exercise the full shelf at the highest price that allows the shorts to cover completely and with total profit under the guise of another nonsensical private "placement to specialist healthcare investors". Therein lies the conspiracy -- the company is working with the shorts, who are also probably the company's largest holders, and they all control the news spigot.
If true, this strategy was likely carved out early in DOC's tenure in exchange for the recapitalization funds the company received.
If true, what we're witnessing is the slow-motion home-stretch leg of the short covering strategy, which is time-limited by the company's burn rate. Give the appearance of substantial internal turmoil, tell the company to shut up on all fronts, kick out anyone who resists, and wait for the price to bleed out until the placement doesn't look provably rigged in the eyes of the law. Nevermind the eyes of retail who watch the ticker day in and day out -- they will absolutely know what happened but they'll also be helpless to do anything about it because there will be no substantive proof.
Also if true, we won't see the short interest climb much higher than 10M... well, ever. I previously said the short interest hadn't budged from roughly 10M the last reporting period, but in actuality it's been hovering around near 10M for a very long while now, as if there's an implied expectation of the shorts' capability to cover that amount.