Puda Coal Inc (PUDA)

[ChaTea]

Some Info About GeoInvesting, Part 1

I am not a PUDA shareholder, but am a shareholder of New Energy Systems (NEWN), a company which GeoInvesting published some negative reports about. I thought that I should look into this company a bit more to determine whether they are qualified to research Chinese equities.

wallshite, great thread about GeoInvesting
(http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_%28A_to_Z%29/Stocks_N/threadview?m=tm&bn=111191&tid=8577&mid=8577&tof=7&frt=2).

I decided to verify your information to see if it matched up and did it ever! Thank you for your research and letting us know who is really behind these companies. I also decided that I’d like to find out more about The Market’s Edge/ GeoInvesting and the people who are listed as working there, and I came up with some interesting information. As I found out a lot of information, I thought that it may be best to start a new thread instead of tying yours up. Whenever I use information you have originally researched, I will make sure to reference that it was you who found it out.

First, I turned to www.corporationwiki.com to see what I could find out about Majed Soueidan (as well as Soueidan Majed, as he is sometimes referred to) and companies he is listed as being an officer of. Some of the companies are found on this link:
http://www.corporationwiki.com/Pennsylvania/Collegeville/1116-Pheasant-Ln-Collegeville-PA-19426-a2433949.aspx.
Some additional information can be found here: http://www.corporationwiki.com/Florida/Coral-Springs/markets-edge-frf-management-llc/28447925.aspx.

A few stood out for me. First, a number of businesses (like Medallion Transportation Ltd., the limo company mentioned before) are listed as being located at the same address as The Market’s Edge, so I decided to find out what sort of building this is. According to homes.com, the property at this address is actually a 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath residential home, not a commercial piece of property (link: http://www.homes.com/property/48309107/1116_Pheasant_Ln-Collegeville-PA-19426).

However, not only are The Market’s Edge and a limousine company located out of a residential home, but other companies associated with Mr. Soueidan are as well, such as Las Olas Management, LLC and Oriana Management, LLC. Also at this address is a company which is named Mms International, Limited, which is apparently the parent company of a coin-operated laundry and/ or drycleaner (which is indicated as being owned by Majed Soueidan) named DLC Laundromat (link: http://www.manta.com/c/mtmn8vl/mms-international-inc). Please remember DLC Laundromat’s ownership interest, as it will come up again later when we discuss The Market’s Edge’s Venture Capital activities.

Wow, this sure is one busy residential house! Talk about one-stop shopping: first, a company using this address will pick you up at the airport and take you to this residential home, where other companies, also listed at this address, will potentially offer you financial services, while a third company listed at this address will be happy to have its apparent subsidiary clean your underwear for the flight back home later on, and, again, the limo company will be able to return you to the airport. Amazing!

Is anything so far standing out as a potential red flag for anyone, yet, regarding GeoInvesting and The Market’s Edge? Doesn’t it seem strange that so many various businesses be located at one address, which, again, is listed as a 4 bed, 2 ½ bath residential address, including such companies as a HEDGE FUND (which appears to be what The Market’s Edge is referred to as being in the GeoInvesting About link: “Andy Schmoyer is a Hedge Fund trading assistant at The Market's Edge”) and a limo service?

The second thing that stood out for me and for wall(stuff – apologies, your name is being blocked) is - what is Thongs, Inc?! Was Mr. Soueidan, the founder of The Market’s Edge and GeoInvesting, previously the officer of an underwear company? It looks like the company was started in 2003 in Fort Lauderdale, FL (link: http://www.corporationwiki.com/Florida/Fort-Lauderdale/thongs-inc-4365059.aspx, and bear in mind I’ll bring up that address again when discussing The Market’s Edge’s Real Estate section). I checked his bio on The Market’s Edge’s website, and nowhere is Thongs, Inc. or (if it is/ was an underwear company) his supposed underwear company officer experience mentioned; there just is information about his extensive financial experience working in IR (note that he did NOT work for an equity, debt, or derivatives research group, or even on a trading desk – just in investor relations) for Vanguard and knowledge he has learned from his own personal investing experiences. I’ll get more into the employees’ bios of The Market’s Edge later in another post.

Turning to The Market’s Edge’s Venture Capital page, wall(stuff) has already shown that GeoInvesting’s domain name’s registrant is The Market’s Edge, Inc., but I also found it interesting that TownWatcher’s registrant is listed as The Market’s Edge, Inc. (http://www.whois.net/whois/townwatcher.com). Is TownWatcher, like GeoInvesting, also just another company owned and operated by the same people who own and operate GeoInvesting and The Market’s Edge? Also, wall(stuff) showed that the address listed for Medallion Transportation is the same as for The Market’s Edge, but this also appears to be true for DLC Laundromat, since, as I have stated before, it appears that the laundromat is a subsidiary of Mms International Ltd which is located at the same address as The Market Edge (http://www.corporationwiki.com/Pennsylvania/Collegeville/mms-international-limited/57973529.aspx). Plus, depending on the source, again, please note that the officer or owner of the laundromat is either Majed or Michael Soueidan.

In addition, I noticed that the company is indicating as one success stories the Skippack Community Sports Center on The Market’s Edge VC page. On the GeoInvesting site under the About Us section, the company notes that Dan David has served as president of RNC Properties, and that this company is “developing a 38 acre sports complex in Skippack”. Therefore, a project which The Market’s Edge invested in had one of its employees serve as the president.

I checked the Venture Capital page on The Market’s Edge, and nowhere is there any mention of the apparent ownership relationships that The Market’s Edge shares with GeoInvesting, and the potential ones it has with TownWatcher, Medallion Transportation, and DLC Laundromat, and the relationship, as president, one of The Market’s Edge employees has or had with a deal you invested in: why is that? I think that as a prospective client of The Market’s Edge, I would like to know what the relationship is between The Market’s Edge and 5 of the 6 companies listed on its VC ‘success stories’ page. Also, as Mr. Soueidan is indicated as being the founder of both GeoInvesting and The Market’s Edge, why is the GeoInvesting section only stating “The Market’s Edge helped build GeoInvesting”? Why use the word ‘helped’? If the founder is the same person for both companies, Mr. Soueidan didn’t ‘help build’ GeoInvesting, he ‘founded’ GeoInvesting. I would like to note that on the GeoInvesting website it is indicated that Mr. Soueidan founded both sites (hmm… verifiable discrepancies between websites… should this put The Market’s Edge outside of ‘The Hedge Fund Circle of Trust’?).

On the Real Estate page, the Fort Lauderdale ocean-front condo consultation caught my eye (it’s the first one mentioned). This stood out to me as I remembered reading that a few companies (Thongs, Inc., Markets Edge Management, LLC, and Markets Edge Advisors, LLC) also were listed between 2003 and 2004 as being located in Fort Lauderdale; all, of course, had Mr. Soueidan listed as their officer (http://www.corporationwiki.com/Florida/Fort-Lauderdale/100-S-Birch-Rd-Apt-2304-Fort-Lauderdale-FL-33316-a1938683.aspx). The building located at this address is called Jackson Tower.

I decided to follow the link given on the Fort Lauderdale listing and arrived at a webpage for MMG Realty (link: http://www.lasolasbeachclub.com/luxury-services.asp). Looking at their maps section, I tried to see if 100 South Birch (Jackson Tower) was listed on their site, and, sure enough, I found it (if you keep closing in on Fort Lauderdale find South Beach Park [it’s on 1A, just off the ocean], keeping going North a bit and you’ll locate Seven Isles – Jackson Tower is one of the red pegs to the right).

So, it appears that three companies in Fort Lauderdale which are listed as having Mr. Soueidan as their officer also were located in a building which, possibly, The Market’s Edge was consulted on for a real estate deal. Is it beyond a reasonable doubt to think that the real estate deal actually involved the sale of one of The Market’s Edge’s or Mr. Soueidan’s own properties? If this is the case, should this really be considered a consultation if the property involved in the deal actually belonged to The Market’s Edge or Mr. Soueidan in the first place?