$ALBKY
Not encouraging a pump n dump, but rather identifying a potential future pump n dump before it has been pumped.
Greek banks are turning into media darlings lately, one need only google "Greek stocks" "Greek banks" to see the positive media sentiment swirling around Greek banks in the past few months.
Greek banks fit in with newbie investors idea that "investing in the most economically distressed nation at a time when it is turning a corner must surely result in big profits because of the risks involved". This is to say, Greek stocks hold 'lottery ticket' appeal.
Which Greek stocks are obvious targets for Grekovery speculation? Greek banks, because though newbie investors want to buy a lottery ticket, they want to hedge their risk, and banks carry the "Too big to fail" factor, which means, the risk is actually quite low in reality.
There are two Greek banks trading on American exchanges. National Bank of Greece and Alpha Bank.
NBG trades on the NYSE and shares cost about $5.60. ALBKY trades on the OTC and shares are $0.22.
I draw a comparison with the Irish situation. NBG is the equivalent of IRE, a decent enough bank, trading on the NYSE, trading very close to its fundamentals, at an approx 1 price/book ratio.
AIBYY, the other Irish bank however, trading on the OTC, is trading at approx 4 times what its fundamentals justify. This is potentially the sort of explosive bubbling which could find its way to Alpha bank.
Being OTC, Alpha bank doesnt list its book value on most sites (currently trading at around 0.9 price/book), meaning newbie investors being too lazy to do the math from earnings reports, will only be looking at the chart, seeing a massive mountain, a penny stock share price, and a valley, and concluding that this must surely be a very 'cheap stock'.
Market cap is another thing. Official market cap on Alpha bank is around 9 billion. However, MOST of those shares are held by the government (HFSF), making the actual float closer to 500 million. When factoring in trading on the ADR's, this float becomes even smaller, meaning the smallest wave of positive attention/sentiment can result in explosive bubbling action, a small preview of which was experienced this past Oct 7th, when a news story was released in which John Paulson dislosed he had taken positions in Greek banks (one of them being Alpha). This shot the price up very quickly. It has since been trading in a very narrow band, waiting patiently for the right momentum to hit it and skyrocket it quickly.
Worst case scenario, you hold a stock with not much risk (it's still fairly valued by fundamentals), but which could explode into a 3 or 4 bagger given the right combination of public sentiment and news stories.
