Trade recap for September 16th: Two 'never' mistakes

See the video for my important thoughts on a few horrid mistakes I made today. I was still up for the day but I should have made $1000 more than I did. Furthermore, I was lucky: my mistakes could have caused me much worse losses.

Today’s profit: $457.53

Disclosure: No positions. I have a disclosure policy.

Genova Biotherapeutics is a perfect pump & dump

If you have ever wondered what a pump & dump is, take a look at the financials of Genova Biotherapeutics (10Q here). They have $35,000 in the bank and somehow are confident that can use that money and patents they bought for $92,000 to develop a cure for cancer.

The company was formerly a travel agency:

“From inception, Kinder Travel Inc. had been a travel agency offering a full range of travel services including corporate travel, vacations, cruise holidays, and group tours. Since Kinder Travel Inc. was incurring continued losses in the travel industry, the Board of Directors decided it was in the best interests of the Corporation to pursue other business opportunities. Through his past contacts in the bio-medical industry, the then President of Kinder Travel Inc. initiated negotiations with Phoinos Oxford Lifesciences Limited, a company incorporated under the laws of the Federation of St. Kitts & Nevis (“Phoinis Oxford”), for the purchase of medical patents for the treatment of prostate and breast cancers.  On April 15, 2009, Kinder Travel Inc. entered into an asset purchase agreement dated April 15, 2009 (the “Asset Purchase Agreement”) with Phoinos Oxford.

The Company subsequently changed its to “Genova Biotherapeutics Inc.” Our shares of common stock now trade on the Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board under the symbol “GVBP.OB”.”

The company has issued numerous misleading press releases:

GENova Biotherapeutics and Prime BioResearch signs LOI on diabetes and cancer cure [Cure! Wow, they bought a few molecules and now they already have a cure (not just a treatment) for cancer!]

New stem cell identification technology could cure breast cancer [again, they are curing cancer!]

Genova doesn’t even own patented molecules. The patents are pending.The company states in another press release that “The Company is aggressively acquiring patents involving the latest generation of biotherapeutic technologies that can cure cancer without any side effects.” That is pretty amazing considering they have $35,000 (Canadian) in the bank. If they can buy cancer cures for that kind of money then they must be brilliant!

Numerous stock touts are pumping Genova stock and idiots are eating it up: the stock closed at $0.80 today on volume of 58 millions shares. Those who believe the hype will soon be left with very little, just as with all pump and dumps (such as recent favorite Spongetech, SPNG).

If you ever run across such a hyped-up company with no real assets, run far and fast. The press releases put out by Genova are over the top even for a pump & dump and I think it likely that the SEC will halt trading in the stock or sanction the company at some point.

[Update: GVBP was halted on 9/23/09 and will be unhalted on 10/6/09. See the SEC press release (PDF).[

Disclosure: No positions. I am a daytrader so I may trade this after the publication of this post.

Watchlist for September 16th

From my watchlist last night:

GVBP – I called it right … it went up, but more than I anticipated or could handle.

ZOOM – This was a nice short on red right out of the gate today. I was busy with other stocks at the open so I missed it.

For tomorrow:

SCII – weird merger news, sketchy and up way big in four days, from .04 to .37. Short on green/red, higher risk.

DIET – 140% price spike in three days on news of a $600,000 PIPE? Short on green/red.

GETG – recycled pump & dumper, up 126% in one day, but still very low priced. Short on green/red, higher risk.

FNET – Preston nailed this shorting as it faded off of highs today. Still up 96% on the day on no news. Short aggressively on green/red.

Disclosure: No positions. I have a disclosure policy.

Trade recap for September 15th

It appears that it is still not too late to sign up for Tim Sykes’ Las Vegas pennystocking seminar on October 18th and 19th. I will be in Las Vegas from Saturday October 17th until Tuesday October 20th and I will be staying at the Excalibur (yay for cheap rooms on the strip!). The seminar is truly a great deal as I explained in my earlier post on 8 reasons why you should go. For an investment of only $847 you get to attend a seminar that lasts for two full days (if you cannot attend, Tim offers the option of seeing a live webcast of the event), you get to meet such great pennystockers as myself and InvestorsLive of the InvestorsUnderground.com penny stock chatroom (not to mention Tim Sykes), you receive DVD recordings of the entire seminar, you receive one of Tim Sykes’ DVD packages of your choice, and you get to attend the wild and raucous pennystocking party Tim will hold at the end of the seminar day (at which I have foolishly pledged to buy a round of drinks for everyone and Tim Sykes will be goaded into doing likewise). So don’t be a party pooper and sign up for the Vegas seminar today!

Today I suffered more pain on GVBP as the pump continues. I cut my losses as it hit new highs late in the day (at $0.63); this was definitely the right choice as it quickly thereafter squeezed to $0.81. I had a nice little trade on RAME that was a nice breakout above $1.12; I wouldn’t have even noticed that had Investorslive not mentioned it in the InvestorsUnderground.com stock chat. I also shorted CNWI and will hold that for a few days or until it dumps … it is another pure pump & dump like GVBP but its upward momentum is already gone.

Daily profit: ($3,893.60)

Despite today’s loss I am currently in a week-long drawdown (in other words, I am back to the profit level I had a week ago).

Disclosure: Short 10,000 shares of CNWI. I have a disclosure policy.

Save time when searching for stock information

You can save time when searching for stock information by installing the following search engines into your browser’s search toolbar. These will work with Firefox and Internet Explorer and maybe other browsers.

Pinksheets.com – I added this search engine plugin. Great for quickly looking up information on OTC and pink sheets pump & dumps.

EDGAR Companies – These two search engines allow for searching the SEC’s EDGAR database of public company filings by company name or ticker.

Yahoo! Finance – This allows quickly searching by ticker on the most popular stock quote website.

Google Finance – As above, but with Google Finance; also works with company names.

Watchlist for September 15th and random thoughts

Only a couple stocks on watch tonight. I’ve been working on my taxes … one problem with being a full-time trader is that I have to deal with estimated taxes. And considering how much I banked last year I don’t just want to use the 110% prior year tax safe harbor provision … which means I have to calculate my income every single quarter to figure out what to send to Uncle Samwise (if you have no clue what I just said, please buy JK Lasser’s Your Income Tax 2009). My tax burden so far this year has paid for either two home-buyer subsidies, the pointless destruction of six working cars, or the bonus that Goldman would give to one janitor.

Another note: I’m about to purchase a very large uninterruptible power supply for my computer. Last Friday I had a two-second power outage that reset my computer and while I wasn’t in any trades, I do not want to deal with that again. In the event of a longer power outage a UPS would give me time to boot up my laptop before power to my main computer runs out.

ZOOM – Huge run today. This was not just because of the news of earnings at their subsidiary; if it were because of the news the stock would’ve gapped all the way up. Instead it ran most of the way late in the day. That means it was momentum buying that drove it up. This is a low-float stock and these are often runners. I would short but I am sure there will be no shares. It might get some follow-through buying tomorrow morning.

zoom

GVBP – Pure pump and dump (see Tim Sykes’ writeup). I’m short from $0.39556 following a Timothy Sykes TimAlert. This likely will go up more tomorrow and Wednesday and then fall. I had to short today because there will likely be no more shares available to short tomorrow.

gvbp

Disclosure: Short 18,500 shares of GVBP. I have a disclosure policy.

Oh, and if you want some light entertainment, check out this amusing use of the devil-spawn AutoTune:

Watchlist for Monday, September 14th

SSN – long on strength, huge volume Friday, no news.

ssn

AMIE – up on debt restructuring, long on strength.

amie

TIV – filed amended annual report Friday, long on strength.

tiv

CNWI – crappy pump, IB had shares Friday, short on weakness, too risky to buy now.

cnwi

VRMLQ – the Q means it is bankrupt. So why then skyrocket 2400% Friday on news? This is a crazy stock and I’ll avoid it.

vrmlq

INHX – still short-biased on weakness.

inhx

Probably the most interesting of the above to me are TIV as a long and INHX as a short.

Disclosure: No positions. I have a disclosure policy.

Interactive Brokers now has an iPhone app!

Interactive Brokers has cheap commissions ($0.005 per share, minimum of only $1 per trade), awesome executions, great borrows on many hard-to-short stocks, and a great trading platform (trader’s workstation or TWS). Up until now there were only two things I did not like about IB: they had a bad mobile trading platform and they had horrible customer service. With the release of the iPhone real-time trading application IB has finally corrected one of their last significant flaws. But don’t worry: they still have incredibly horrid customer service. Here is what they have to say about their new iTWS trading platform:

IB’s state-of-the-art iTWS provides electronic access to your IB account from your iPhoneTM. iTWS lets you enter and manage orders, view executions, monitor your account balance – all from your iPhone!

With iTWS, you can:

  • View real-time streaming market data.
  • Trade stocks, options and futures worldwide.
  • Take advantage of our SmartRoutingTM technology, which searches for the best price available at the time of your order and dynamically routes and re-routes all or part of your order to achieve optimal execution.
  • Monitor your trades.
  • Monitor account information.
  • Manage your portfolio.

Disclosure: No positions. I am a generally satisfied customer of IB and I have my main trading account there. IB has no affiliate program so I get nothing for recommending them.