In the world of finance theory, a credible suggestion that you are being forced to raise cash at exorbitant rates or are internally valuing your assets sharply below where the market appears to value them is traditionally a death sentence for your share price. The reasons for this are straight forward enough: Investors hate desperation but not as much as they hate making an asset play and being wrong on the value of the assets.
Then there is InterOil.
A Cairns, Australia- and Houston, Tx-based oil and gas producer that has been touting in one form or another a potentially epic find in the wilds of Papua New Guinea for more than a decade now, it recently raised cash at exorbitant rates and appears to be internally valuing its assets way below what the market appears to think they are worth.
The story is none too complicated: InterOil, a company whose shares are seemingly made of titanium, is paying rates for cash that only credit cards aimed at those with bad credit can obtain. Better still, the person pulling InterOil’s eyeballs out is its long-time sponsor and key investor, Clarion Finanz AG and its controversial chief, CarloCivelli.
[Civelli’s record as a broker, investor and promoter of a series of often troubled energy enterprises drives skeptics somewhere north of berserk. He and InterOil have loudly proclaimed that he is little more than an investor and advisor, although the power dynamics of this picture would seem to indicate otherwise. When having your company feted at the NYSE, it is customary to have the CEO or the company’s founder/guiding spirit ring the bell at the opening. Civelli, in the picture, is the one reaching over to ring the opening bell.]
To call InterOil a battleground stock is to be droll. The dispute over the proper level of its valuation and prospects in every sense of the word is analogous to the sanguinary trench combat of the First World War’s Western Front. Short-sellers, critics and investigative reporters raise more and more questions about management disclosures and candor but the stock continues to enjoy robust support. To follow through on…
News about the SEC subpoenaing Sam Antar for 37,000 documents in their investigation of a California-based research firm called the Fraud Discovery Institute, a company belonging to Barry Minkow, another criminal turned whistleblower, continues to spread. Here’s Henry Blodget’s take on the question of who and what the SEC should be subpoenaing. – Ilene
Some people think the company has discovered highly valuable oil and gas reserves in the jungles of Papua New Guinea and that the stock will continue to be a home run. Others think the company is basically a gigantic fraud.
Among those in the latter camp is reformed fraudster Barry Minkow, whose company Fraud Detection Institute sells research to big investors and is now engaged in trying to blow the lid off what he sees as an InterOil (IOC) fraud.
Barry Minkow (in earlier days)
As the SEC’s earlier investigations of shortsellers David Einhorn and Bill Ackman has demonstrated, when a company’s stock is performing well, as InterOil’s is, the SEC tends to go after the company’s critics and shortsellers rather than the company itself--a habit that is bewildering and infuriating to those who respect the fundamental work shortsellers do. And that seems to be what the SEC is doing in this case.
At Portfolio.com, Gary Weiss reports that the SEC has subpoenaed Minkow and Sam Antar [SEC Crazy Talk, below], another former convicted felon turned whistleblower, to find out what they have been saying about InterOil and other companies in their communications to shortsellers. In a twist that will frighten advocates of free speech and journalist shield laws, the SEC is also subpoenaing communications Minkow and Antar had with journalists.
The target of the investigation is a California-based research firm called the Fraud Discovery Institute. [Sam] Antar happens to be friends with FDI’s owner Barry Minkow. And, like Minkow, Antar is a noted whistleblower on white-collar crime and securities fraud. He’s a former fraudster who masterminded the Crazy Eddie stock fraud in the 1980s. Minkow served time in prison for the ZZZZ Best stock swindle, but now is an ordained minister and preaches…
Timing the market and picking stocks doesn't work for most people, according to Gerard Minack, an investment strategist departing Morgan Stanley with a final farewell note full of advice.
I believe that Shinzo Abe has made a very serious strategic miscalculation. I used to be confused in much the same way he now seems to be, but I was cured of my confusion by thinking about Chinese inflation.
For a long time, I was puzzled by the fact that America’s endless multi-stage QE program seemed to have no effect on measured inflation, on the CPI and the PPI. But then I realized that by only looking at the United States and their three hundred million-plus people, I was missing the big picture, missing the most important part of its aggregate impact on the Earth’s seven billion inhabitants.
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The $OEXA200R Monthly (the percentage of S&P 100 stocks above their 200 DMA) is a technical indicator available on StockCharts.com used to find the "sweet spot" time period in the market when you have the best chance of making money. See Is This the Best Stock Market Indicator Ever? for a discussion of this technical tool.
The charts below are current through the week's close.
U.S. equity futures traded slightly lower in early pre-market trade following mixed economic data out of the eurozone. The moves follow basically flat trading on Wall Street from Monday after futures rallied into the open following weaker than expected Chinese data.
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In other news around the markets:
The German ZEW Economic Sentiment Index rose to 36.4 in May from 36.3 in April but missed expectations of a gain to 38.3. The current conditions index was also weak and over 77 percent of respondents said they do not expect another rate cut in the next six months.
To learn more, sign up for David's free newsletter and receive the free report from All About Trends - "How To Outperform 90% Of Wall Street With Just $500 A Week." Tell David PSW sent you. - Ilene...
It seems that every Tuesday in 2013 since January 8 has been positive on the Dow. And this past Tuesday was no exception. Now that sounds like a trend to put money on -- buy the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (DIA) at the close each Monday and close out the position late on Tuesday.
The Dow and S&P 500 both hit new all-time highs once again on Wednesday, while the Nasdaq hit its highest level since November 2000. The “risk on” allocation of new investment capital into cyclicals continues, although Wednesday saw leadership from defensive sectors Consumer Staples, Utilities, and Telecom, along with Financials. Nevertheless, ConvergEx reports that the average correlation of the ten S&P business sectors to the overall index averaged 82% last month. While that is below the 86% averag...
BMY - Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. – Shares in drug maker, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., are ripping higher today, up 6.5% at $44.94, the highest level in more than a decade, ahead of the release of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2013 Annual Meeting abstracts tonight. The ASCO Annual Meeting begins on May 31st in Chicago. Options on BMY are far more active than usual today, with overall volume topping 64,000 contracts by 12:25 p.m. ET, versus average daily volume of around 11,400 c...
We are starting to see some very extreme readings on our monthly and weekly index charts since there has been no correction this year. I posted below first the monthly chart of the S&P 500 going back 15 years showing bollinger bands – rarely do we get above the upper one, and never have we been this far above. Then below that I posted (with 4 charts of 4 years each) the weekly data and you can see we are at a rare time we are above the weekly bollinger band as well. This non stop rally is getting very historical.
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Stock market posts another record setting week, but the big news came after Friday’s close.
Courtesy of NASA
The stock market put on another record setting show with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) closing at a record high 15,118 and the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) closing at 1633.70, another all time closing high.
For the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) gained 1%, the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) climbed 1.2%, the Nasdaq Composite (NYSEARCA:...
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Well, well, well....it is good to know that there are others in the scientific arena who believed that YMI Bioscience's data (cough - Gilead) is a better drug than Incyte's Jakafi. Now, the definitive data are still unknown, but there was enough evidence from a Phase 2 trial to take a small risk for a huge reward. So, let's forget about Apple (AAPL), and do nothing but biotechs from now until Congress passes universal health care coverage for prescriptions....and drive the prices down so that research and development is no longer feasible to conduct in the US. Even Seattle Genetics (SGEN) has been on a tear as of late...
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