Trader’s Narrative

A few months ago I warned my readers about a penny stock on the pink sheets called MitoPharm (MTPM), saying I wished that I could short it. Immediately after, the price of the shares doubled (from $1 to about $2) which lead to some childish comments about my motives and my intellectual capacity.

Fast forward to now and I have people leaving ALL CAPS comments calling MitoPharm a “rip-off” and “a scam” while others are shell shocked and just want to know what happened.

Well, I tried to warn you. It was the least I could do since the people behind the scheme were targeting my Google Adsense account to promote it. This is part of the reason why Google and I parted ways.

Depending on which data source you use, the graph of MitoPharm will have a different price axis. That’s because on September 4th they announced a 250% stock dividend (issued September 14th 2007). So for each share outstanding, four were issued.

I don’t think this had anything to do with the collapse. This was a pure “pump and dump” scheme. If you want to see other examples, check out these other penny stocks. I’ve received email spam promoting each of them:

Symbol:CLRL — Email received October 22, 2007
Symbol:FFDH — Email received November 2, 2007
Symbol:HYBT — Email received November 4, 2007

There’s even a website which tracks the penny stocks touted in spam emails. I just can’t remember the name now although I’m sure I have it bookmarked or on delicious somewhere. If you know it, drop me a note.

Finally, I have to say that it is possible to make money from this sort of schemes. But, you have to be very careful and know the game. If you ride along with the promoter and exit before the “dump”, you should do fine. If on the other hand, you mistakenly believe that this is an investment, God help you.