Good evening. I normally come on here to reply to others' posts, or to refute inaccurate info from our bashing friends thru my experience of many years in the corporate accounting world. I hope in some small way I have helped both rebut the inaccurate posts and maybe helped educate some shareholders regarding accounting facts, rules, and other information.
Tonight, I am going to follow up on this post, and share a couple of my opinions.
NSS has been a problem for many/most companies, both large and small for quite a few years, but has never been so prevalent as in the more recent years, as electronic exchanges have all but replaced brick and mortars. And nobody gets singled out more so than penny stocks who are most vulnerable to not being able to fight back with NSS positions, if you want to call them that, because they really have no position, as they never intend on covering.
I am not referring to short selling for the sake of keeping the market liquid, which is its intention, but instead to those who short sell a startup company in the hopes that they can continue to do so until the market is so diluted with air shares that no amount of buys can push the price up.
The hope is that eventually they can so suppress the SP that a company needs to get financing rather than being able to finance itself through the sale of shares, which is really what being a public company is all about...getting financed thru a public that believes in your product or service.
There are loads of basically loan sharks out there waiting to pounce on the opportunity, financing a few million $ for tens of millions of $ worth of convertible stock, then proceeding to dump the discounted shares into the market and make a fortune.
Most SH dump as soon as they hear news of the toxic financing, while others are left holding the bag, usually including the company.
It's really ashamed because many good ideas come from small business entrepreneurs, but can never be brought to fruition because of people who have found a loophole and exploited it to the fullest extent. Hey, we're all here to make a little money, but at least most play by the rules.
One more fact...many, if not most, economists and finance types (and I work with quite a few, so more than just my opinion) now agree that Lehman Bros, Bear Stearns, Indymac, and other financial institutions did not fail so much from bad loans but from short selling and the subsequent drop in share price, rendering their equity virtually and eventually worthless. So this is not limited to startups like SPNG.
A couple of opinions...AYME is the MM buying up all the shares for the comapny, no revelation there. I only hope that between the company and us little retailers that we can keep the shorters from getting the upper hand.
I think it has become apparent that shorts are pulling out all stops. There simply cannot be any shares left in the float, if any at all exist after the company's buying back plus DF's group.
Why hasn't the SEC stepped in? There are nearly as many opinions out there as there are people giving them, but I believe it is because NSS has become so prevalent that to clean it all up could cause an economic burden that would make the current recession look like a walk in the park. They allowed it to happen and now do not know how to stop it, for stopping one would mean attempting to stop all, and it could lead to the ruin of our economy when all is brought to light.
They tried implementing the uptick rule (you can google it), but that was short-lived and easily manipulated as well. But what we are left with is to hope and believe that the company has a plan (and I think they do) that will lead to an uplisting, CUSIP change, and eventually an accounting of all shares.
Just don't think it will happen without an enormous fight. Hang on for an historic ride.
