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re: "If we see the price fall then we know the outcome will not be favorable to MOSH"
I have dome a visual surveys of charts vs. earning announcements last few earning seasons and conclude that you really can't tell anything from that.
A lot of traders don't like to hold through earnings regardless of expections as a matter of course will sell off.
Other stocks will run up to earning and then sell off even with good earnings. (recent example ldk)
One also needs to consider that hedge funds run the markets. They will as likely "run the stops" as try to make an early buy assuming they think they know something. Unless you know which ones are long or short and how much and which have an "axe to grind" against a particular company it's pretty hard to claim any kind of reliable correlation.
Volume spikes in a low range can be slightly better than worthless, imo.
With mosh, people drop the hot potatoe when they see the price sag, figure they can get back in before the big event -- who knows maybe they can...
over 65k units went through at .21
yet that stupid 5k .21 block is still there.
seems like it should have been taken out.
what gives?
scott lvl II aggragates
as of 11:28am
Bid Aggregate Ask Aggregate
.23 5000 .25 5000
.225 15000 .27 5000
.20 5000 .30 10000
a bit different
also t&s saw a 5k and 9k block go by @ .25
the 5000 ask block @ .25 seems like it should of been taken out already -- some kind of perpetual 5k block.
I don't know how reliable lv II is here.
Yesterday I would say that we had what i call a top doji (very symetrical). We seem to be in the retracement now. It's pretty mild so far.
re: "If we win the lawsuit or get a large settlement, is there a good chance that MOSH will begin operating again and the wells come back online? "
First let me say that I have just been summarizing what I have read here and in connection with the various posts. There are others here who have been studying the mosh situation a lot longer than I have. OTOH I have been interested in the resource sector in general for a while now too.
So, it's hard to say. Good question.
People are comparing mosh to other royalty trusts but the one's cited are much larger. mosh's holdings are pretty small by comparison.
One thing that may not have been considered is the possibility that PXD may offer to buy out the trust completely. Tyey seem to want the resources, otherwise why all the effort and skullduggery?
Now I'll admit that I'm not too familiar with how trusts work exactly. With a company, usually it has a board of directors and shareholders who vote on such matters. mosh doesn't have a board of directors, it has a trustee. I have the impression that the trustee takes the place of a voting board and can basically decide things presumably that are in the unit holder's best interests.
Now there are what, approx 70m units out there? What if they offered, say, $1 per unit to but out? That would only cost them $70 million. Quite a bargain compared to $1.5b
OK that's too low. But what they offered $5 or $7 per unit?
I'm sure many of us would start to consider selling at some point. I image the trustee doesn't operate in a vaccuum, he probably would have some channel of input from at least, major unit holders...
I don't know. Hey, Guys, could the trustee preside over those sorts of decisions? What do you think?
"Looks like Interactive Brokers could come up with a 1000 for someone to short."
That's interesting. Not exectly a lot of shares though. But it indicates there may actually be some short interest.
I wonder what the margin requirement is? I checked with Shwab and posed a general question about shorting penny stocks. It seems that they allow it (unlike Scott) but he intimated that the margin requirement were usually such that usually one wouldn't want to bother with it.
Wonder if IB knows about the possible $17 / unit payout? I suspect that whatever their margin requirement is, it's probably not nearly high enough in this case.
This is great news. mosh is likely being shorted by some poor schmucks somewhere. Actually I feel sorry for the poor shmucks. Talk about a possible short squeeze for the record books...
Probably not enough shorted for a general squeeze, but individually - hope for their sake they are like most good shorts and knuckle down and do their DD before it is too late for them.
re:" what kind of info, outcome can we expect at 01-16 court meeting and what kind of movement in stock price, would be considered+++ real fun!, in your(humble opinion"
If I may...
We expect a new trustee to be confirmed by the court. Rather than being a banker with a conflict of interest like the old trustee, the new trustee has a background in the o&g industry and can be expected to "go to bat" so to speak for mosh unit holders in regard to recovering revenue lost due to "slight of hand" chicanery on the part of PXD and to a lesser extent Woodside, operators of the wells. Since the operators have sole control of the properties and, well, well operations, they also control information available to mosh unit holders.
PXD in particular has acted to keep holders in the dark about the true value of their remaining holdings and their obvious motive as apparent bad stewards in choking off revenue was to cause the trust to wither away and terminate so they could then grab billion dollar reserves for themselves. It's a "Snidely Whiplash" scenerio personified. PXD as mustache twirling villian had all but finished tying "Sweet Beth" mosh to the railroad tracks.
They did something similar a few years back in Kansas, were caught, hands were slapped in court, but apparently did not learn their lesson.
An outcome favorable to holders is expected at the court hearing. A favorable outcome of the hearing clears the legal path for further advancement of the case. The next step would be compelling "discovery". PXD presumeably has seimeic data so-far witheld and so forth that they have been using to drill the rich Midway find (held back from mosh). --kind of like the "Nixon tapes" PXD probably doesn't want to turn that level of detailed info over.
So, they may (wisely) decide to settle soon after the hearing. In which case mosh holders (through the new trustee) may elect to accept money (and/or I, suppose properties) as an inducement to settle the case "out of court".
Settlement in the prior Kansas affair was about half of damges claimed I believe, so, in this case, we are looking at around $500m. This could happen anytime between the hearing and a trial date, after it is set. This could still take what, weeks, months? I don't think years because this issue has already suffered postponements, and already dragged on for years (since 2003 i think) and is now "coming to a head".
It would be in PXD's best interest to settle. If they don't they have a good chance for a finding against them for the full $1.2b not counting possible "punitive" damages, punitive damges would be to "dissuade" them them from trying something like this again in the future. I mean, if all they have to do is give back what wasn't their's in the first place, that's not much of a risk to try again, perhaps resolving to be more sneaky next time.
If they lose the trial outright (likely), they could appeal but would have to put up (2X)1.2 = $2.4b in escrow pending the outcome of the appeal. What could they appeal on? Maybe a technicality, but since mosh has money for good lawyers now, that seems unlikely. The best thing for PXD would be to get this thing behind them asap or risk being consumed by their own greed.
In regard to price action. I agree with the Amer Bulls program style assessment of the candle pattern = bullish, however, today I saw what looked like the big 25k block, formerly a glass ceiling at .35, spread out into an array of 10k "stumbling blocks" from .32 to .35 so I would expect some comgestion in the .30 area to follow.
I'm thinking a (normally more-or-less dreaded) double top could form after testing the recent high. If it bounced off, we could see some consolodation in a declining wedge for a while since news may grow quiet for a while after the hearing. People may choose to try to trade their cost basis down and anticipate re-buying in the possible quiet spell.
However, if it pierces resistance in the .40 area it could keep going. It's a cliche but the "coiled spring" will get wound tighter as time goes on, understanding of the oppurtunity here sinks in with buyers, and supply of loose shares presumably continues to dry up.
One obvious strategy is to overwieght then reduce a bit on on upspike, to get cost basis down, which is why I think a double top is possible. On the other hand, a lot of people may get second thoughts about that, maybe they won't be able to get back in in time, in which case, that fuels a breakout to the upside.
And those would be the least likely group of people to have computers and thus find out about what going on lately with mosh...
Although i've been pretty good about identifying short candidates (e.g. housing) have been too much of a chicken to stay short for long. Usually the first uptick and i'm gone.
Missed out on a lot of money that way. Oh, well.
Never actually shorted a div stock to my recollection. I think I heard about having to pay the div from my boroker when asked about it...
re: "..doubt you can short units in a trust because what would happen with the monthly royalties?"
I imagine the same as with shorting a div. stock. Short position holder just has to pay the div. if he is still short thru ex-div. date.
wonder if anybody is shorting mosh?
Not us retail peons of course (who are only aloowed to short stocks over $5), but I've heard that brokers furnish hedge funds inventory lists for a fee -- that provides a source of hard shares for shorting.
Since Scott has that restriction basically classifying mosh as a p&d (we know better -- i think <g>), if it was a typical pump and dump, there would normally be money to be made since would be coming off the pump right about now... Other mm might think the same - easy short.
If things progress the way we hope - my, won't they be surprised. <g>
i see it.
Glass Ceiling @ .35 of 25k shares...
Well volume is > 200k so far in only first 1.5 hrs of trading.
That 3000 at 10:23 was me. <g>
Now how come mine plus the other approx. 100k of orders didn't take out the 5000 .28 block?
need 5000 sh to show up in order book display...
I didn't know that. Thanks. Learn something every day.
I guess the fact that none of the blocks showing are < 5000 would have been a clue. <g>
OK thanks. Figured it might have been something like that. Legal realted documents are hard to read sometimes.
PXD's history of past malfeasance should help bolster credibilty for mosh's complaint now.
PXD isn't a "first offender".
I put a low-ball bid in for another 3000 sh @ .14 friday but it didn't seem to show up in the lv II order book. Wonder why?
Guess will need to look for it again today.
A couple of possibly interesting thoughts...
btw The LDK board on yah** is down -- possibly crashed due to msg volume. If you like soap operas that's the place. Made a couple of posts over there earlier since I am currently underwater on that stock. But I still kind of feel like writing something. It's nice and quiet over here and this is more or less on topic for mosh, so somebody who might look for something to read over here can, well have something to read tonight.
There is this theory about aenorobic no wait what is it....
_Abiotic_ oil. = Non-biological oil. Basically the theory that oil forms naturally and continuously deep in the earth's crust (mantle?) and then seeps slowly up to the surface. It is formed by a reaction of water with carbonates in the presence of iron under conditions of high pressure and temperature.
I think that it might be true since it has been demonstrated in a laboratory but I tend to disagree with anti-peak oil proponents who cite it as a reason that people never have to worry about running short on oil.
Most of the 150,000 or so wells that remain in the US are "stripper" wells- far advanced on their depletion curve. First they gush thousands a day, then they slow to a trickle of a few barrels a day. The funny thing about stripper wells though is that once they reach that stage they hardly deplete at all. They keep going for years and years but only at a trickle. I'm thinking that could be abiotic oil seeping up. Carbon 14 tests seem to confirm that the oil os not from plant ot animal matter as well. But only a few tests were done before funding was dropped.
Also with some capped wells that were thought to be dry, when they are uncapped again a few years later, they start trickling again. So it probably isn't necessarily a good idea to apply "rejuvination" techneqies to wring every last drop out -- means they will take longer to refill.
If it applies to gas. It will be interesting to see the flow rates from Mosh's newly uncapped wells, see if they recharged slightly.
The good thing is that means you can have low flow wells that don't deplete - if in a trust you've got basic perpetuity.
What was the other thing...
What is the possiblity that the settlement offer would be comprised of oil or gas properties /wells instead of or in combination with cash?
If so, should the trust accept it?
It could bolster the royalty payment factor and hence permanently boost the unit price as well....
Might be attractive to pxd since if they fell short of the $1.5b with cash on hand, they would not be forced to liquidate assets at firesale prices in a hurry. Just turn over some of their other (preferably producing) assets to make up the difference
Just some idle speculation here.
re:"
ALFORD v. PIONEER NATURAL RESOURCES USA, INC., STEVENS COUNTY, KANSAS, CASE NO. 93 CV 37
Plaintiffs filed this action on November 22, 1993, against Mesa, Inc., and its affiliates ("Mesa"), challenging Mesa's method of accounting to its royalty owners for royalties owed on gas which had begun flowing through its newly constructed Satanta Plant in Grant County, Kansas. On August 17, 1997, Mesa merged into Pioneer Natural Resources USA, Inc. ("PNR"). PNR assumed any liabilities generated by the lawsuit and was substituted for Mesa as the defendant herein."
[...]
I don't get this. Mesa merged into Pioneer??
Which MESA?
We're Mesa Offshore MOSH
Then There's Mesa Royalty Trust MTR (kind of mosh's kin)
I also found a Mesa Energy MSEG - actually not a bad little o&g at first glance 1.25 sh Ironically they have some operations in Kansas as well as others from Tex going northward...
Too many Mesa's.... I'm getting confused.
Who's on first?
re: "It's a post from the MOSH yahoo message board"
Oh. Right. The yah** in the title through me off there.
It registered as yah like in "get your yahs yahs out"
I didn't go there for a long time since they changed their format. I'm coming to grips with it now.
Still like this format better. There's no way to effectively do/follow a running commentary on price action with a thread format. No one really adheres to the topic headings, so the useful content just gets scattered around actually worse than what on would theoretically expect from a linear format.
Speaking theoretically, mosh should be getting some good exposure over there. In spite of their missteps, for example now their getting ready to screw up their charts, which weren't that great to begin with, (the new takes several minutes to load with dial up and it doesn't look like you can cut and paste them anymore - their sole previous redeeming virtue)...where was I?
Oh yes, I was saying, they still have a pretty good volume of users. This is more like a cozy neighborhood bar compared to a flashy nightclub. I guess the combinaiton of market slump, end-of-year, holidays... there will probably be a delayed action for things to catch on.
Presumably there will be a point where loose units run dry and the mm will realize that they will be compelled to let the average price notch up. It pretty hard to tell much right now, charts notwithstanding, too few data points and the wide spread. Hopefully with more activity (presumably quick traders) will at least be able to get more confirmation of trend.
Nice up article. I like "up". <g>
But waitaminute here...
I thought mosh is asking for $1.2b which comes out to , what, %14, $17 /unit. If they settle for half = $5 or $10 / unit. It's all good....
How do you get $40? Would be nice if such could come to pass but where did you hear "billions?
Is this a published article or what? (link?)
All in all, PXD is starting to look like a good short candidate...
re: "Don't remember where I read it, as it's been a while, but I seem to remember an amount of something like 1.5B in assets PXD sold off somewhat recently..."
Heres a recent one for $540 million:
11/27/2007DALLAS (AP) - Oil and gas company Pioneer Natural Resources Co. said Tuesday it closed the sale of its Canadian subsidiary to Abu Dhabi National Energy Company PJSC for $540 million in cash. AP
http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/ticker/article.aspx?symbol=US:PXD&feed=AP&date=20071127&id=7860949
So we know that they must have at least that much laying around in a desk drawer somewhere. <g>
Well, I don't know that people are ignoring the positives exactly, it's just that unless one's timing is perfect or presentient just about any sub-dollar stock one buys quickly leaves the investor underwater and about 99% of these never recover their initial pump highs of which falling knife most people end up buying into.
Since most stocks in this price range have serious problems that aren't immediately evident there is a lot of understandable skepticism and suspician for those who may have just started looking at it.
The lack of liquidity/thin volume makes it unappealing for traders.
The overall market is a lot worse than the major indexes indicate as well. Except for a few isolated sectors, most stocks have investors underwater right now and even normally good trading and investment stocks seem to be behaving irrationally and erractically. People who have just lost money on a "sure thing" -- fully reporting major exchange traded atocks with great fundamentals etc, that were never seemingly in doubt are suddenly tanking now, people are probably not going to be out looking for high risk penny plays so much right now as in an up market.
People are distracted by the holidays. There are probably a lot of reasons.
With me, I've probably got about as much as I want unless I get a serious bottom fishing price to lower my cost basis.
Obviously, the longer one waits, the more risk to missing the date of record whatever that may be. people may or may not realize that, the record date could be set in a quiet settlement that we might not hear about right away, right?
But, with so many of these little stocks one has to wait and wait for the big event and often it never comes. Or it comes and turns out to be a non-event or worse. Meanwhile, that's dead money. I certainly get sick of that.
Psychologically it's a lot easier to be patient when you are not underwater.
Almost every chart pattern has an evil twin. Is this a consolidation pause before the next leg up? Or is this going to continue the long tail down? (much more typical).
It's not unusual for the volume to completely dry up and the spread widen such that you get pretty much trapped in on this price range of stock as well. People like me who actually like this kind of stock, nevertheless, tend to learn to try to balance caution with exuberance. The ones who go overboard on the latter tend to be gone, which leaves those erring on the side of the former.
ok. Found the woodside well test stuff from several years ago.
Haven't found anything about a gas quality problem though.
It was temporarily shut for, what appears to be, essentially, completion -- installation of the 7 inch well casing.
Well depth is 20,000 ft, not 26,000 ft. as I incorrectly posted before. I think that I may have read else where that around 26,000 ft it constitutes some kind of limit...may have got them confused.
Still pretty deep - gets me thinking about anerobic oil theory.
The seismic shows it as a nice well though, as good as the others in the area.
"no dilution...and all the other crap we all have to deal with when dealing with penny stocks..."
Yes, endless dilution and toxic financing is the bane of 99% of penny stocks even though many of them have a nice story on the surface.
The other thing with pump and dump pennies is the promoters take their pay in stock and then dump into the upward spike in interest from their pumping...
Mosh is a gem in that regard alone. I sign up for all the spam pump letters I can so I know which ones to avoid. <g>
mosh is a gem in the dilution category. Also got a clean bill checking against the known spam list.
"many eyes are waiting for a "safe" base to form......once we establish some support we can really only go up...I say we get back to .25 or better today!"
Oh, I hate to say this but strong support isn't until around .12, which was before the word started getting out. Give it a few cents for that would be .15
Unless one of us decides to start throwing our wieght around buying thousands of shares. It's kind of fun to act like a big fund player moving the market with our little trades.. <g>
The overall market is lousy right now, so there is a damper on people looking for excitement. So, I hope not but I think could easily touch .15 again near term, but after that, a bounce back up to .25 or so, soon, yes. That will probably become the new short-term support. It's a nice even dollar fraction number. Pennies seem to like to graviate around such levels for some reason.
Minimum expectation results on development (.03 royalty) should
put us around .30 at some point in the near future. before actual news after which, well, who knows..
.......It would be hard to find a better .20 play out there with more upside potential...
Actually I have another one brewing. But I don't want to say anything just yet. I need to decide whether to dump or get my cost basis downa bit before revealing to us other hi-rollers around here. <g>
I wouldn't mention it except its a little quiet here right now and I need to keep my mind occupied on something else, --decided to hold some ldk through earnings (broke my own rule - like a moron). An example of how big stocks fair no better than pennies when it comes to market machinations...
btw <g> = am grinning (emoticom from the old bbs days)
Thank you for your excellent and informative posts.
I've lost enough money on speculative "special situation" stocks that one would think a person would learn to temper his exuberance on finding one that looks promising.
They say that one shouldn't "get married" to an equity but it is actually much like that. At first it's all sweetness and light, but, then, after the commitment, the previously unnoticed flaws start to surface, suddenly one finds one's self underwater facing the difficult decision of whether to suffer an expensive loss to get out or keep trying to stick it out. <g>
re: "Also, Pioneer reported problems on the quality of gas, and that the collection platform was rejecting their gas."
One benefit of researching "oppurtunities" is expanding one's knowledge of an industry. Now I need to learn what can go wrong with natural gas. I think that I have heard that water and liquids can be present -- would seem to be correctable by adding in filter equipment? Some outfits actually sell the (hydrocarbon) liquids. How bad could it be?
I recall reading that midway is, what 26,000ft. That is a pretty deep well. I think that is near the limit of conventional drilling. I wonder if that could have something to do with it.
Ok there they are. I switched to regular level II, apparently better than totalview for this...
thanks.
Need to conserve remaining posts and get ready to finish Christmas shopping soon. after the close anyway.
" SBSH "
What lev II are you using?
I am using totalview on scott and all I see are ETRD and NITE sitting on 10k with the wide spread...
"Its an OTCBB not a pink"
I'll be darned. I stand corrected.
Stock is looking better again already.
"it acually appears much worse than it is.... "
agreed. but we're probably going to need to see more flattening before a reversal.
This is where people did to seriously consider breaking the rule of always selling at a loss. <g>
Nothing has changed, if anything we get closer to good news. On the other hand nothing has changed so there is no external catalyst for up until more people find out.
There is that matter of ownership dispute. How did that go again? I thought that it was just a case of concealing prod capabilty on what we own, but what we own (well, rights anyway) we still own. If i'm a little unsure about that maybe others are..?
That is part of it. Buyers holding back to see if they can get in lower.
It's a bottoming pattern but, hard to tell on a pink like this.
The usual pink p&d it just keeps stretching out...
Here, there is still good likelihood it is just a profit taking pullback.
Yeah, long tail down torment for a while.
Actually diminishing volume on the downtrend is probably good.
There was that big 115k block somebosy apparently dumped around 11:10 that kicked the ball rolling downhill...
Wonder who would sell like that?
" It looks to me like all four WD61 wells should be back on line by now..."
Too bad we don't have any WD40 wells. We could put that stuff in little spray cans and make a fortune... <g>
You should keep in mind that you can still lose your money investing in a trust the same as with any stock.
In fact, many passive trusts are structured as a "return of capital" which is why they often get a more favorable tax treatment. That is because the oil or gas or whatever eventually runs out if there is not an active program engaged to replace the reserves. As that happens, the unit price goes down and down. The royalty payments are supposed to compensate the unit holder as the air is let out of the balloon so to speak but this is not always the case that what gets received will equal or exceed the initial investment. "Mature" royalty trusts may not be such a great bargain if their reserves are almost all used up. mosh was thought to be pretty much one of these, it was thought to be all fizzled out as reflected in the vanishing unit price until the new information came to light. but this is a very rare and exceptional event.
Otherwise it would have likely terminated ( the equivalent of bankruptsy), remaining shareholders lose their money -- as many trusts do.
I used to really like pwi (prime west) which had a nice balance, savvy active management who balanced the cost of replacing reserves vs. return but they just got bought out by an arab outfit. The remaining ones out there are somewhere in between. All seem to be sagging now probably due to escalating rig costs (offshore rigs at $100,000 / day etc) i.e. huge costs of replacing reserves.
My impression is that trusts are at the end stage of the process. Exploration is the beginning phase.
Bottom line: One needs to research trusts just as carefully as stocks before investing. (trading is another matter but bears its own set of risks--one has a lot more frequent oppurtunities to screw up, with investing you have to wait a lot longer to see if you screwed up <g>).
"Plaintiffs to pursue claims for the benefit of ALL UNITHOLDERS"
Definately breathing a bit easier after seeing that...
it's the only possible risk factor i can think of based on the extent of information available. I can't really find anything else possibly bad, usually not a shortage with the typical pink.
So there has to be something to keep repeating to yourself to keep from going in too big. At least from my personal perspective. This might mean missing out on an astromical payoff vs. a nice big payoff but even though the odds look good, a little prudence doesn't hurt either imo.
you were wondering about the tale of the two mosh shares...
Turns out the kid entered the order like it was for cash account instead of my margin account so it got a different code and the system treated like it was two different stocks.
It's all back to normal now. Nothing to do with mosh, basically I had previously been doing a lot of trading in my other ira account which is cash so, force of habit or whatever an honest mistake on their part, now quickly corrected.
...picked up a few more shares today.
btw scott "restricted" for a stock simply means resricted from online trade = phone order, there is no limit on number of shares one can buy. For some reason, they do that to "watch" pinks with "suspicious" volume spikes. Not sure who that is supposed to "protect" -- as a dicount trade place they never give trade advice, so, a bit of an inconveniance to call in for now but oh well.
no, it won't let me either -- got the "call local branch.." message again.
Guess will try to call in...hopefully they'll place the phone order for $7 like yesterday (vs. 27.50 "broker assisted")
That song from "my fair lady" keeps playing in my head:
"Oh wouldn't it be loverly..." <g>
I think that it will probably be all right. Hopefully just like any other dividend distribution -- doesn't care how long so long as before the ex-div date. But those are usuaully periodic. Here, it's kind of a one-off especially pertinent to long time holders so far as damages. Still, I imagine new holders are a small percent of total so hopefully, one could expect to get swept along with the larger tide...
I just noticed something weird in my account. I now have two mosh's. One appears to be the shares I bought before scott restriction, the other after. Now why would that be?
I guess I need to give them another call. It's been a strange couple days...
Agreed.
Certainly a lot less dicey then solm a while ago. Sounded good initially but the torment factor went up after a while.
mosh sure seems to have a good case. It's hard to think of how this could go against us. I guess that I'm a little worried that new unit holders might get shut out of the potential settlement?
gee, Maybe I'm actually not late to the party then. That would be a nice change. <g>
Things are just starting to "heat up".
greetings board.
New position here as of yesterday.
Actually got a fill on previously entered order while scott was down during snowstorm yesterday.
Now what is with the "restricted" status for mosh on scott?
The person at my branch (nice kid), didn't seem to know much other than it is put on "pump and dump" pinks...
Awfully quiet here. With this story one would think people would be jumping all over this like gangbusters.
Droopy day for stocks overall though.