Trader’s Narrative

Well that was fast.

I happened to check up on the scam du jour only to notice that Pink Sheets has slapped it with a TOXIC label:

Buyer Beware. There is a public interest concern associated with the company, which may include a spam campaign, questionable stock promotion, known investigation of fraudulent activity committed by the company or insiders, regulatory suspensions, or disruptive corporate actions. During the time it is labeled Caveat Emptor, any stock that is not in the Current Information category will also have its quotes blocked on pinksheets.com.

Looks like the promoters didn’t get their money’s worth before the stock collapsed under its own weight:

Notice how the sudden fall was followed by a continuous decline in volume? Well, except for that massive spike a few days later. The volume pattern is now one of disinterest as this penny stock fades away.

A lot of good it did them to fill inboxes with email spam touting this POS. The red arrow shows when I wrote about PERT’s pump and dump. Calling the implosion of these kinds of stocks is as sporting as dynamiting fish in a lake.

So why can’t you sell short OTC bulletin board stocks? Would such blatant pump and dump schemes proliferate if unobstructed short selling was allowed?

Short answer: no

On January 11th, 2008 Permanent Technologies (PERT) released a statement to publicize their reverse merger into a public shell:

PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX/ — Permanent Technologies, Inc. (Pink Sheets: PERT.PK) announced that effective immediately its stock trading symbol has changed to “PERT.PK.”

They also announced that they have up to date financial information:

The Company further announced that Pink Sheets has determined that the Company is in full compliance with Pink Sheets’ “Guidelines for Providing Adequate Current Information,” having earned the “Current Information” designation.

The most recent filing I could find was a quarterly report for September 30, 2007. According to that, they have $309,790 in assets and $249,870 of that is non-tangible (Patents). Oh, and there are no sales or revenue to speak of.

What they do have is spam emails promoting the stock. Lots and lots of it.

Before flushing my stock spam, I usually do a quick scan. I’ve noticed that the amount of spam I’ve received pumping PERT outnumbers the other stock spam put together.

Some huckster out there is promoting the heck out of this. Unfortunately, a lot of people are falling for this scam and buying (see the chart to the left).

Sadly, you can’t really short over the counter stocks. Or this would be trading at 0.000000001 per share. So consider this a free public service announcement (like the previous one about MitoPharm).

I can’t caution against all of the stock spam out there nor is it my place. Everyone is responsible for their own due diligence. As Lord Overstone said, No warning can save a person determined to grow suddenly rich.

If you’re thinking of buying PERT, you may be interested to see what happened to MitoPharm (MTPM) a few months after the deluge of its stock spam went dry.