It is a sad end to a brilliant idea incompetently and ill-executed, a slo-mo failure that morphed into a scam.
It was aided and abetted by company plants and willing stooges who kept holding out straws of hope when it was clear Wave could not sell its security wares into a market left ragged from hacks and cracked and was screaming for fixes.
That was the big contradiction. Why couldn't Wave sell security when everyone and his brother and sister were looking for it? Steven's reply, "the market doesn't get it," may have satisfied the foolish, but not the thoughtful, IMO.
Then you had the Loop Group of which I was a member--many terrific rumors came from "people close to the company" [people participating in private placements without telling their followers on the board]--and mgt was reading all our supposedly secure and confidential messages back and forth. At least three of our group were feeding these messages to mgt in the hope of a scrap of info in return.
In the end, it was all a mirage--fashioned from the elements of the oldest cons in the world.
'Here, lads and lassies, is a chance for the ordinary working person to become wildly rich--shhh, not many know about this incredible stock that is only a buck, but soon to be maybe a thousand--after so many forward splits--it's a sure thing.'
And even when faced with a blizzard of contrary facts to the 'big things are going on underneath that we can't see' crowd, facts were denied or if accepted were called irrelevant.
And every time the company slapped the shareholders in the face with a cold, dead fish, there were the excusers who stepped in and made up all kinds of irrational reasons to explain why what was happening, was not happening.
But in the end, folks chose to believe either the unbelievable dream, or the truth. The two were not compatible and the destruction of the dream built on empty promises was certain. It was a mirage to begin with.
Even now, there are still some deniers, twisting a bankruptcy and closure of the company, transfer of assets away from shareholders, into some kind of LSD dream where they win and win big. Wow!
The question was raised has anyone learned anything? IMO, no. When it appeared the Genius was anything but a fat, arrogant, entitled, illiterate rich boy--and even after he was fired by among others, his own father--there were still some who defended SKS.
Others voiced support for Bill Solms after it was apparent, he too, was lying about prospects. Until the end, I heard good things about the Lt. Col.
Those of us who foretold the end long ago, simply based it on the fact they company couldn't seem to sell squat in the hottest market ever for security--yet we were subjected to some harsh words and some threats.
Even as the waters closed around the last part of the Wave wheelhouse, the truth-tellers were never recognized, except by a few gracious Wave supporters--but at the end, it seemed the ones most wrong about Wave, were still antagonistic and belligerent towards those who got it mostly right about Wave.
The abandonment of excellent investing principles was cheered, all eggs in the Wave basket for some. The fact no real analyst ever covered Wave--instead we had a succession of paid 'analysts' who for $25-50K/yr would repeat SKS's insane projections of Wave prosperity soon to come.
The DD'ers would point to these projections coinciding with their most fervent desires about Wave as confirmation "it was coming and it was going to be huge" and the money poured into Wave--and right out again, into the pockets of the managers and manipulators.
Wave ran on promises of prosperity soon to start. Never mind it never started or even came close, facts were shrugged off, because
Wave was 'different' from other stocks.
The ineptness, expanding nepotism, greed grabs, mistakes and missteps were all brushed away as irrelevant. "Will any of that matter when Wave hits $100?"
Many of the shareholders helped keep this scam going when it was all but clear it was an out and out scam. They had help from the company who provided the illusions the believers wanted to see and hear.
I feel only sadness.
Blue
