Innovation Pharmaceuticals Inc (IPIX)

[loanranger]

What are you talking about?

Some knucklehead overplayed his hand on the short side, violating the limits placed on his trading, and got caught with his pants down. The article lays out the facts but fails to explain this:
"BPTH shares had been trading at around $2.00 per share throughout 2019 and averaging only around 120,000 trades per day.
On March 1, 2019, BPTH saw a sudden spike in volume with 58,812,100 shares traded causing the price to rise to a high of $8.84/share on the day before closing at $7.72/share.
By the close on March 5, 2019, BPTH had fallen to $4.62/share.
Believing that BPTH would continue to drop back to its previous levels, Reynolds executed a series of sales transactions that resulted in a “short” position of 824,436 shares of BPTH on March 6, 2019.
Instead of the price continuing to drop as Reynolds hoped, BPTH saw another huge volume spike (72,385,800 shares traded) on March 6, 2019 sending the share price to a new high of $14.40/share."

What drove that outrageous volume?
It's hard to say but certain facts about the Company might be worth noting.
The following items appeared in a prospectus (offering around $20M shares at $25.95) that was filed the week after that huge volume spike (72,385,800 shares traded) on March 6, 2019 sent the share price to a new high of $14.40/share:

"On March 6, 2019, we announced updates to the interim analysis from Stage 1 of the Phase 2 clinical trial. We announced that the efficacy profile improved to where 11 (65%) of the 17 evaluable patients had a response, including five (29%) who achieved CR, including one complete remission with incomplete hematologic recovery (“CRi”) and one morphologic leukemia free state, and six (35%) stable disease responses, including two patients who had greater than a 50% reduction in bone marrow blasts. The efficacy data from the 17 evaluable patients was very favorable compared to the reported CR, CRp (complete remission with incomplete platelet recovery) and CRi rates of 7-13% with LDAC treatment alone. Importantly, through investigation by the principal investigators, it was observed that 68% of patients were secondary AML patients, a difficult class to treat. On March 6, 2019, we also announced intended amendments to this Phase 2 clinical trial to, among other things, add prexigebersen in combination with decitabine for MDS and close prexigebersen in combination with LDAC."


"On February 8, 2018, we effected a reverse stock split of our outstanding shares of common stock at a ratio of 1-for-10, and our common stock began trading on the split-adjusted basis on the Nasdaq Capital Market at the commencement of trading on February 9, 2018. In addition, on January 17, 2019, we effected a reverse stock split of our outstanding shares of common stock at a ratio of 1-for-20, and our common stock began trading on the split-adjusted basis on the Nasdaq Capital Market at the commencement of trading on January 18, 2019. All common stock share and per share amounts in this prospectus have been adjusted to give effect to both the 1-for-10 reverse stock split and the 1-for-20 reverse stock split, retrospectively."

Obviously there were reasons for the wacky trading in BPTH. Whatever triggered it didn't result in a lasting effect...it trades right now for $13.20 and today's volume so far is less than 18,000 shares.



Could something similar happen with IPIX?
Sure. Some good drug news, a wildly manipulated 3 or 4 days worth of huge volume and a fool forced to cover an overextended short position (the whole IPIX short interest is only worth $100K) could move the shares up from its current price to a quarter or so.

That what you had in mind?

Sheesh.