August is always quiet. Fewer people at their desks, investors in their beach huts (owned or rented) and volume is about the lowest it will ever be except around Christmas. That’s when the office boy rallies happen – when the big boys are in the Caribbean reacquainting themselves with their third wife and seventh child. So just the right time for a pump and dump.
Forget the cocoa market (that’s quite cool by the way cornering Hershey bars, fighting obesity one trade at a time and the fat girl won’t know it’s your fault). If you want nefarious dealings on the trading floor you just have to look for penny stocks. There’s bound to be something going on, and August is the time to do it.
Our latest pump and dump was PPBL (OTC: PPBL), a cash box (or a Special Purpose Acquisitions Company for those who don’t like vulgar terms of abuse) that used to publish a lot of magazines but now seem to do a bit of bespoke publishing of poker advertorials for online gambling companies and have just bought the small TV production company BOLD TV whose flagship show is Who the Hell is Dan Bruder? Well we don’t have a clue. Anyway they don’t really have much money and they are $8 million in debt. That’s according to their March filings. We still haven’t seen the June ones.
So PPBL went up a lot, and now they’re down, hard. Around 37% on Friday.
Anyway it seems that Investor Hub is caught in a bit of a storm over this ugly duckling. I know. The old ADVFN in a stock ramping scandal, it’s reassuring. It may be nothing to do with the whole thing, but one of their popular stock pickers, Grandbob has been accused of taking 500,000 shares while singing the stock’s praises, and his board got closed.
PPBL was a reasonably well covered stock. To show how some stocks move almost without reason, Lixte (OTCBB: LIXT) became a ten bagger on Friday, but it was an up and down week, going up from 0.2 on Monday cents and finishing on 0.6 cents. The company is testing various lead based cures for brain cancer. It’s been under the radar, and hasn’t even put out a news release for a year, so this is probably a product of low volumes, as the rise was all on Friday and they suffered a massive fall on the Thursday. Up three times in value on no news? It really shows the risks of thinly traded stocks.
One formerly prominent climber is Washington Mutual (OTC: WAMUQ) the subprime, sorry, aspiration focussed, home loan provider, although they were back near their old levels by the end of the week. This is a popular stock with the stock tippers, perhaps because most people remember the place going bankrupt. This is also a reasonably liquid stock as a lot of people held it until, well, they went bust. Well the shareholders still do hold them, but they can only trade them on the OTC market.
It got more liquid this week as first there has been the aftermath of a reasonably favorable court decision for the stockholders, but towards the end of the week three hedge funds decided to sell up; all at once.
Another massive upward mover, although it lost half its gain was Heli Electronics Corp (OTCBB: HELI), which after some feverish speculation put out some sober financials which saw the stock lose half its gain from the first three days.
One of the big losers was the Motors Liquidation Company (OTC: MTLQQ), the former GM stock. At times they’ve got a higher transaction volume than Procter & Gamble. The price of this is almost guaranteed to be zero so the wonder is not that they’re falling but that anyone’s still buying them.
In other news JBI Inc, (JBII) has just been upgraded to the OTC QX tier, the Pink Sheets proxy stock market (just don’t call it that), and there are claims that it’s going on to NASDAQ. This one’s just great. It converts plastic into oil. So recycling and solving the world’s energy needs. I wonder if there’s a perpetual motion machine there? Seriously this could be a real gem, if it’s for real. Think about it this way, even if it’s not economical in its own terms, if it really can do what it says it’s probably going to collect an almighty government subsidy.
Other stocks going to the OTC QX level are foreign quotations, such as the Canadian VG Gold Corp. (VGGCF), the Australian Energy World Corp. Ltd (EWCLY) and the Dutch supermarket operator Ahold (AHONY).
Disclaimer: This corporate profile is provided for information purposes only and should not be used as the basis for any investment decision. We are neither licensed nor qualified to provide investment advice. We were not paid, nor do we hold a position in this stock at the time of this posting. Do not use the above information as investment advice. It is for entertainment purposes only. Penny Stock Classroom is not liable for any losses you may incur.
