Archive for the ‘Miscellaneous’ Category

It’s currently the case that vigorous discussion is occurring as to whether the United States economy is still struggling with a protracted recession that kicked off in mid-2007, whether it left that recession sometime in 2009 or whether it entered a recession, left it and is now preparing to enter another one. Regardless, almost every investment maven with an eye on stocks believes that over-the-counter (OTC) stocks, which are more familiarly referred to as penny stocks, may just be one of the better investment vehicles to make use of during turbulent economic times, which the present most certainly is to many people.

Given the above, it’s probably smart to gain a better understanding of just what penny stock are and aren’t. Though there’s no strict and universal definition of a penny stock, in the United States it’s generally accepted that a “penny stock” is a common share of a small publicly traded company that trades at less than $1 per share. The major stock indexes in the United States (Dow Jones, S&P 500 and NASDAQ, usually) all have their own rules for when a stock is and isn’t considered a penny stock and, therefore, subject to being de-listed from the applicable index, though the general thinking is that stock that consistently sells for less than $4 over an extended period of time (around 3 months) has become a “penny stock.”

At that point, the stock is usually de-listed from the major index on which it sits (in effect, it’s kicked off that index/exchange) and must move to an exchange which allows trading on such low-priced stocks, usually an Over-the-Counter (OTC) exchange of one type or another (there are several, including OTCPK and OTCBB, which stand for “Over-the-Counter, Pink Sheet” (penny stocks are often called “pink sheets”) and “Over-the-Counter, Bulletin Board.” The OTCPK is typically considered to starting out point for small publicly traded companies offering shares of common stock at prices as low as $0.0001 per share or even less. The OTCBB exchange is considered a step up from the OTCPK exchange and is often thought of as an intermediate exchange on the way to the big league major stock indexes.

Penny stocks are like any other share of common stock issued by any publicly traded company, for all that many trade for fractions of a penny (an example would be shares in a company selling for $0.0015, which is well below a full penny in price). But in such inexpensive stock lies a real potential to reap rich reward, either on a daily — day trader-type — basis or in the mid-to-long-terms. The classic investment strategy, for those disinclined to move into and out of a company’s stock on a frequent basis throughout the day using one type of trading strategy or another, would be to identify an inexpensive stock issued by a company that’s likely to appreciate greatly in price over several weeks or even a few months.

This sort of strategy has been known throughout time as “buy low, sell high.” Not very exciting in the short term but it’s certainly exciting enough if a $200 investment in 100,000 shares of a stock eventually sees each share rise to $1.00 or more. Though it’s a relatively rarity to see a stock once trading at $0.002 or less make the jump up to a dollar or more per share of common stock it does happen, and more often than many might realize.

So, then: Maybe instead of spending $200 on some frivolous item or another that provides only a temporary sense of excitement that’s soon purged from one’s memory it might be that finding a discount broker, signing up and then buying $200 worth of shares in a company will provide far more fun and excitement? It’s certainly possible, and it may even be extremely lucrative, especially if you as an investor have landed on a company and its stock that enjoys success in a tangible way. At that point, your $200 may rise to several thousand dollars or more in worth, and what’s not to like about that?

• $SPOW is on my radar this week. #
• It is looking like a bright week ahead for penny investors! #

Over-the-counter (OTC) stocks are notable for their volatility and their ability to experience relatively large swings in share price throughout the intraday trading cycle. Stories abound of a stock up big one hour and then down and “in the red” (i.e. dropping below its opening price that day) in the next. Many OTC stocks also experience price increases and declines on relatively small transactions. In all, if one is looking for excitement and short term profits on a day trader basis, for one, the market for OTC stocks (more familiarly known as penny stocks) is the place to be.

Several OTC stocks this week have performed in a bullish manner.

So; which OTC stocks this week have, so far, vigorously traded or otherwise done well for their investors? While dozens upon dozens could be listed we feel the ones below stand out for various reasons:

This first is Garb Oil & Power, Corp. (GARB), which has seen its shares traded at an extremely high clip the last few days (30 to 40 million) while also increasing in share price from “triple zeros” (ex. 0.0008 up to 0.001), where it had hit a low of 0.0006, back up to 0.001 and a finish “in the green” (a net increase in price per share) the last two days. GARB has recently benefited from positive news, including securing short and long term financing and the development of a number of joint ventures with other energy related companies. After a heavy period of increases in its outstanding share count, which seems to have stabilized, the company appears to be poised to begin generating possibly significant revenues in the future.

The second company doing well this week on the OTC markets is Andiamo Corporation (ANDI), a holding company that’s heavily involved in real estate title services as well as a variety of Internet-based technologies. The stock will open today (October 13, 2011) at 0.0032, which is nicely above what it opened the October 12th trading session at (0.0015 or so). Average daily trading volume is a healthy 13.38 million shares, too, and the stock shows no sign of slowing down as yet.

A third stock that’s performed in an interesting manner is AERN (Aer Energy Resources, Inc.), with the company now referring to itself as FTPM Resources, Inc. It trades as an OTCPK (OTC Pink), and its intraday performance this week has made for a good day trading opportunity, with the stock’s price rising and falling at somewhat predictable entry and exit points.

Overall, the stock has also been up for the week and predictions have been noted that say the stock should experience as much as a 57 percent increase in share price by the close of the trading week from its open at the beginning of the week. AERN shares will open the October 13th trading session at 0.068, and the October 12th session saw shares reach highs exceeding 0.085. Shares in AERN also trade at a healthy pace, with 4.56 million of them moving on an average daily basis.

The last stock of note continues to be NXOI (Next 1 Interactive, Inc.) which is up more than 25 percent for the week, though share price rose only about 3 percent over the course of the October 12th trading session. It’s also trading nicely, at between 3 and 4 million shares per day for the week. Today’s trading session will see NXOI stock open at 0.0195, which is a nice increase from its open last Monday at 0.0148 per share. The company also has a healthy market cap of $1.63 million, a relatively low amount of shares outstanding (about 120 million) on 500 million shares authorized and a raft of positive news indicating that its real estate and travel television network and VOD (“video on demand”) capabilities are on a path to generate significant revenues in the short, mid and long terms.

Overall, all markets (especially the OTCs) have been fairly bullish this week, making it perhaps the best time this year, so far, to enter them with a concerted and intelligent trading strategy. Certainly, OTC stocks seem to be presenting opportunity after opportunity to hopeful traders.

The pharmaceutical development field is strewn with the wreckage of failed, though once promising, medicines. In fact, it’s far more the case that a drug company will spend hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars in research and development in the hopes of bringing a new drug to market only to see it founder on rough shoals, going to the bottom never to be seen again. Truly, the pharmaceutical industry can be one tough ship to pilot when it comes to creating revenue.

VistaGen on the verge of possible lucrative biotechnology breakthroughs.

However, a company currently exists that’s using the latest in biotechnology developments to create a set of stem cell technologies that may actually be able to rescue many such failed drugs as well as to engage in a wide range of cell therapies, or regenerative medicine protocols. In the first instance, VistaGen Therapeutics, Inc. (VSTA on the OTC markets) looks to be moving aggressively to expand patents on key portions of its suite of stem cell technologies that support what it calls its “drug rescue program.” In other words, the company (as noted in this report) appears to be on the verge of a breakthrough in drug rescue and wants to ensure its rights.

As far as the second facet of VSTA’s effort (regenerative medicine), this report notes that the company has made advances in both pancreatic cancer treatment using stem cell technology as well as regenerative medicine therapies in general. Things, indeed, look very promising for this biotech firm. Of late, the company’s also begun to gain notice from those whose job it is to seek out up-and-comers in the biotech world, with VSTA scoring a blurb in the September 15, 2011 edition of BioWorld Today, a newspaper exclusively focused on this very lucrative market sector.

In looking at the company from an investment point of view, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that, given its relatively high price per share (it closed the September 29, 2011 trading session at 2.59), VSTA is something akin to a traditional blue chip stock, even. Certainly, its price is reflective of the high esteem that many hold biotech firms – and the rich promise of veritable medical miracles they can bring – in. Additionally, a company that might be able to take a once-failed medicine, rehabilitate it and make it effective (all while owning certain rights to that medicine), earning millions and billions once said medicines make it to the market, could be worth much to shareholders, other investors and even various global drug manufacturers.

To top it off, if VSTA is able to create a progression of serious advances in pancreatic cancer treatment, which is just one among several areas of regenerative medicine the company is involved in, then the sky would be the limit in terms of share price for this bold and innovative biotech player. In the opinion of a number of industry players, VistaGen seems close to making just such an event become a reality, and sooner rather than later. For OTC players, that may also mean that the firm’s 2.59 share price could easily push past 3 or more upon announcement of most any biotech advance on the part of VSTA.

Certainly, the stock’s price has been flexible enough on the low end, with a 52-week trading range of 1.75 to 2.60. Given its almost-blue chip-like status when it comes to “penny stock” trading, it shouldn’t be surprising that its stock trades lightly on a daily basis, at an average volume of 571. There are only about 15.24 million shares of stock outstanding, with a float of around 10.14 million shares on a total authorized share count of 400 million. That the company’s operated so successfully without much in the way of dilution of shares, if any, speaks volumes about its actual strength.

Smoky Market Foods (SMKY) Aims to Serve Up a Tasty Investor Dish

It’s no secret these days that more people than ever before are looking for foods that combine great taste, high quality and a natural or healthful character. Generally, though, finding foods that combine robust and memorable taste with natural or healthy characteristics is like trying to find gourmet chocolate cheesecake being served at a dieters convention. If Smoky Market Foods, Inc. (SMKY) gets its way, though, great tasting food of high quality and even a bit of natural or healthful character will soon be the rule and not the exception.

Smoky Market Foods itself is the product of years of work on the part of the company’s CEO, Eddie Feintech, a former barbeque restaurant enterprise entrepreneur. Over his decades of work in the barbeque restaurant industry, Feintech had noticed a growing desire on the part of consumers for foods that sacrificed nothing in terms of taste while also being relatively affordable and at least not terribly bad for you from a health standpoint in the case of certain types of food such as fish, meats and other products.

Eventually, Feintech determined that smoking different types of meat, fish and even beans (with meat and fish able to be produced in both gourmet and non-gourmet menu offerings) provided the solution to the issue of great taste, high quality and natural or healthful food production. Traditional smoked foods techniques, however, tend to be both labor and capital intensive, which doesn’t lend itself well to cost-conscious food service delivery, unfortunately.

Happily for all, Feintech’s R&D work on smoke oven technologies eventually paid off, with the SMKY CEO creating wood-burning oven technologies capable of producing high-quality, great-tasting foods, and in mass quantities to boot. Even better, Feintech’s technologies have gained the approval of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which closely watches smoked foods, both for food safety as well as the safety of the ovens themselves. With such approval in hand, SMKY intends to mass produce a complete line of smoked meats of all types along with a gourmet menu of non-smoked dishes such as soups, casseroles and even quiches.

What’s best of all, for both consumers and investors in the company, is that SMKY’s proprietary smoking techniques allow the company to mass-produce foods of extremely high quality and taste while keeping production costs below those of other companies producing such foods using more traditional smoking processes. The company’s hard work in these areas has attracted enough success to this point to push this OTC stock to a September 13, 2011 closing share price of $0.40.

That share price, though, may also push higher now that the company has signed an advertising agreement with Weight Watchers International, Inc. in which SMKY will introduce its unique Smoke-Baked Salmon line to Weight Watchers members in both Canada and the U.S. Ad campaigns are due to kick off in late September in the United States and in October in Canada. Certainly, SMKY has the financial wherewithal to make something of the ad campaign, given its nearly $34 million market cap.

At present, the average daily share trading volume for SMKY stands at almost 71,000, which also may increase now that the tie-in with Weight Watchers has been announced. As of mid-August, 2011, Smoky Market Foods has an authorized 200 million shares, with 103.6 million shares outstanding and a low float of 13.4 million. Its effective float, though, is actually lower than that at 5.6 million, given that the company’s original seed investors hold 7.8 million shares, which makes the company a potentially tasty dish to be served up hot and ready for a legion of OTC investors.

Crowne Ventures, Inc. (CRWV) Looking at a (Possibly) Golden Future

On Thursday, September 8, 2001, U.S. President Barack Obama gave his much-anticipated jobs speech to a joint session of Congress. To say that the markets were unimpressed is an understatement. Friday the 9th’s trading day was generally a bummer, with the Dow losing 300 points. Fortunately, gold, that good old standby, remained relatively steady and continued to outperform its stocks and bonds cousins, posting a September 9^th spot price of about $1,845 per ounce.

With gold shares suffering much less greatly than other securities from the prevailing global economic uncertainty running through the broader markets many smart investors are choosing to enhance their portfolios with this precious (and increasingly more liquid) metal. This makes a gold mining and exploration company like Crowne Ventures, Inc. (CRWV) an increasingly good bet when it comes to getting in on the movement toward gold as a supplement to, or even replacement for, various fiat money systems like the US dollar and the euro.

For those, however, intimidated by the thought of buying, holding, storing and trading in actual gold – but who still want to reap what can sometimes turn out to be a significant yield from an association with the metal (such as a company that explores for it and then mines it) – CRWV could make for a good substitute for the metal itself. According to several top market analysts, including Giles Keating, head of research for Credit Suisse Group, gold is still projected to do well throughout the remainder of this year and into the next.

Given the movement of gold shares in 2011 (the metal was trading for $1,500 last April and it’s improved by nearly $350 per ounce in the interim) the promise of a rich reward, not only for investors in the actual product but for those companies mining it, is certainly there. And for companies with the skill and expertise to produce gold, the sky could be the limit in 2012. From available research, CRWV appears to be a possible success story in the making.

Currently moving in a big way into the Tecuala mining area in Nayarit, Mexico, CRWV is engaging in a number of positive relationships with claim holders of gold, silver and rare earth deposits in that region of West Central Mexico, which is about 40 miles from the Pacific Ocean, situated roughly between Mazatlan to the north and Puerto Vallarta to the south, two coastal resort areas of uncommon beauty. Nayarit state itself has a significant mining industry and is rich in deposits of lead, copper, silver, gold and other minerals.

At present, CRWV trades as an over-the-counter (OTC) Pink stock, with an August 22, 2011, share structure of 400 million outstanding shares, a float only half that (at 200 million) and a total of 500 million shares authorized. CRWV also boasts a healthy $11.20 million market cap. It also trades briskly on the OTC Pink market, with a Friday, September 9, 2011, trading volume of 24 million shares and a closing price of 0.02, with the day’s range being 0.0185 to 0.0289. The average daily trading volume is 9.16 million shares.

Additionally, as of September 9^th, 2011, CRWV’s 52-week share price range was 0.0185 to 0.51, showing there’s plenty of trading opportunity in this mining and exploration company. Given where gold is likely to go in the face of continuing market uncertainties, and the rich mining opportunities presenting themselves in Nayarit, Mexico, Crowne Ventures, Inc. could be just the security for those looking for a potentially lucrative mining and exploration stock.

How to Get Started with Penny Stocks

Penny stocks can be really advantageous if you know how to use them properly because these stocks are speculative and very volatile in nature. If you do not have a well prepared plan you can end up losing more than what you have earned. There are three main requirements of starting to trade in penny stocks: Money, Knowledge and a good broker.

Money

Start with little money. You will probably lose in the beginning as the market is extremely unpredictable; therefore, putting only a little capital at risk is better than losing it all. Never even think about putting your rent or food money into it to make big profits! It is easy to make money but it is also equally easy to lose everything here. Start off with whatever you can afford to lose only. When you have started making profits and researching well, then you may try to invest a little more. The bottom line really is that you need to a have separate account for trading in Penny stock and do not mix it with your daily expenses. Spreading your capital among many different stocks reduces the chances of you losing everything.

Knowledge

Knowledge is the most important factor which will determine your success or failure. You must invest in buying books and guides on the topic before you start on penny stocks. The books will not guide you on a specific decision of which stock to buy and which to avoid but they will provide you the background on how everything works. Apart from that, there are numerous websites which will help you with learning and also give you an insight about the market. Look out for someone who is experienced and can share information with you and maybe even give you tips on trading in penny stocks.

Once you have the basic knowledge and understanding, start with your own research work so that you can make wise and informed decisions. Have a group of about 20- 30 penny stocks which you can track. Keep a record of their business information, financial data, pros and cons of investing in that stock, press releases or any other information that you can lay your hands on. Also keep an eye on the stock price on the daily basis. You can learn a great deal if you are consistent and then make a decision based on your findings.

The Right Broker

Find the right broker if you are looking for big advantages. Traditional brokers are more accessible and good if you want to sit and discuss things but they are expensive as well. On the other hand, online brokers are a good alternative as well; especially for new or small investor as the fees is low and it is easier to simply log in and check you account. Being online means it is easier to find out if the transactions are complete, or track them if required, check trading patterns, receive press releases or updates. Since there are so many online discount brokers available, you will have to check and decide which suits you the best.

Once you have all the three elements in place, you are ready to start making money the penny stock way. Remember that knowledge is never complete so keep reading and keep yourself updated to keep making money.