Your post speaks to a significant factor and one that can be discussed only half-in-jest.
The fear of feeling like an idiot for selling right before imminent news has kept many shareholders from selling during slow bleeds. It happened during the drop from the multi-dollar range to the twenty cent range a few years ago and it happened on the long decline from $2.00 to the low $1.00+ range and now once again, it was hard to know when to sell, wait for the bottom and buy back in, especially with the fear that maybe this time will finally be different.
I am pretty sure a lot of shareholders feel like NWBO management is just waiting for them, individually to say "Uncle!" and sell before dropping the bombshell in such a way that it will gap up before they can buy back in at anything resembling their dollar cost average (unless of course they are really old shareholders who were virtually wiped out because then even on a gap up they might still be in the red, but few, if any of those folks remain). The joke would be that Cofer Black is monitoring our brokerage accounts waiting for that moment. In some ways it is very selfish of shareholders like myself not to give up our chance of profits and to hold on to this need for the last 7 or 8 years to have value and just to say "You know what? Let me sell NWBO tomorrow and cure cancer by the next day."