Baltbear on Finance markets are like marshmallows

someone suggested that his “buy and hold” strategy..which he says has been getting hit the last 2 quarters is much more intelligent than channeling, rolling,…whatever somebody wants to call “buy relatively cheap, sell relatively high”
this issue is always what is “relative” …
buffet (the one with dairy queen..not krispy kreme) has opined that it’s better to pay a lot for a well run company than get a sheap buy on a badly run one..or words to that effect.
thus, i offer, as a simple corollary to some law of a baltbear, if a puppy has a record of book not converting to sales, then sales multiples cannot be tooo far above reality check time.
when looking at a story stock, xyz.pk, that has $15mm in book, and has turned the last $10mm in cash into <$1mm in gross sales, the valid multiplier for p/s = 0.
if xyz.pk was expected to be getting $10mm in gov’t paid deals, and the gov’t changes its mind, the p/s is now <8.
etcetcetcydydydyydaaa… so if xyz.pk has been rolling 4 - 6 based on people’s expectations of that gov’t welfare, then the changed policy changes the rolling range. if the book val converts to >>actual i/p $$<< like a patent lease for $1mm a year, instead  of an imagined $12mm for the possible maybe o please future value of patents, then book multiplier can be moved up, and xyz.pk will possibly roll in a higher channel.
without a firm grasp on such realities, puppys will become mangy flea carriers in the port.
somebody who complains about other people makiing $$ rolling and channeling, but who refuses to place limit orders more than 10 minutes away from one he expects a fill said,
:”. It is not easy and many times they will skip your order.”
yeah… and???
if it was easy it wouldn;t pay. the idea that anybody can learn charting, and charting is always meaningful, and yhoo gives it for free…yeah. a sucker’s game to suck money to yhoo…
some amateurs think (ok, william james would call them paranoid delusionals) that if they wait til 11:06 to place a limit order for 1k @ 5 1/16, it will get filled, because the specialist is waiting for their order and wants to mess with them, but will be distracted by the sudden order and….. yeah….

more often, the specialist fills orders in an orderly fashion, good ones for him, ok ones for his friends, the rest in order of entry…and when u decide to try for a fill @ 5 1/16, the guy who decided yesterday gets filled, and ur told to wait ur turn…which may never come,,especiallly when the speciualist went naked on 1k @ 7, and covers by buying that 1k @ 5 1/16 himself.

:”Think about it, if someone could pull that off, they would be trading a large Fund somewhere and would not be on yahoo”
one of a few metricks i use in provenancing the cred of random posters. actuallly, it gets pulled off every day, in part by those guys hiring people to cover yhoo boards–and others–with garbage posts,
because those guys >>>are the swings<<<<.

:”A sale at 6 could end up proving very dumb if the stock gets to 7,8,10 etc.”
nope. listening to people who have already turned down 4 baggers because they want 20 is dumb. why? becuase they are, in reality, only trying to infect you with 4 bagger fever.

an entry for the purpose of getting 20% apr is an exit @ 20% apr. anybody who enters the mkt saying “i’m gonna get rich buying this expotic puppy of a story” will get killed. disciplined speculators seek returns..not fortunes… u wanna fortune??? goto vegas. tell elvis i said hi, how’s the diet working out for ya…  fortunes are made by clear-headed use of previously unavailable resources. that’s why the word derives from the latin word for “luck”…not “betting.”

“coulda woulda shoulda” is a child’s game.. the prudent speculator who asks, “how can i make 18%, year after year, thereby doubling my $$ every 4 years..without losing it all??” notices that if he makes 18% in one month, he can be in cds the rest of the year.

of course this attitude is anathema to the promoters who need to find buyers. they will continually preach the idea of never leaving a dime on the table for the next guy–so they can sell you theirs when they know its past time to go. a historical example: what brought leh down?? not being able to find any suckers for their bad paper except themselves until their “profits” consisted of feeds from buying and selling to themselves. the “buy and hold” market –including the otherwise great ben stein–missed that one totallly. laws of a baltbear “always leave money on the table for the next guy.”

:”some who are not even in the stock, telling people what to do????????”
anyone telling anyone what to do without a loaded gun stuck in their mouth is a poser playing one or another sociallly acceptible sand box games.

those who like this puppy and want to trust management will trade for a basis like that of management.

there are dozens of varieties of stating that fact. but most of them are disguised to sound righteous, and noble…and lulling….into a deadly sleep . a variant is to declare a holding “an investment for the future” and thus..not something to be watched, cared for, bought and sold..that works for actual “investments”–that is, castings of bronze or gold. but since the book of Daniel, it has been notably stupid to over-value such investments.

let’s get specific: are “stem cells” the new “beanie babies” ????

if one does not run a continual check of that problem, yes.

is information emerging so that “stem cells” as source material can be bypassed??
yup.
steadily.
the question is..with what economic utility??

those who want to roll over for the posers and the self-righteous will pay attention to garbage of future predictions like “50″  for some dog and keep making donations to insiders, their running buddies and the cult members.

to a specific puppy, btim.amex …
the buy and hold types are saying:”I think smart money added anywhere in the 4’s and is holding this particular stock for much higher prices.

Trading BTIM will likely lead someone to a major opportunity cost down the road and they will miss more gains then any short term profits they banked. Short term profits are taxed more aggressively and incur commission expenses as well.”

to which i reply, consistently…
ok…lol..u keep telling ur clients that.

and i’ll tell mine what i tell them…and offering a few freebies about how to do the dd on the story, and how to avoid the sharks.

and  “10″   and “4 - 6 with spikes” will continue to define the space, with “8″ as a measuring rod.

fd: i have been both paid and thanked for keeping people out of btim.
fd: clients in a related puppy, isco.ob.

Posted under business

Advanced Life Sciences Holdings, Inc., that is to say, adls.ob–cause who really cares
what some puppy is called, the issue is what’s the ticker?–hit yesterday for the “whore stock”
portfolio. Client’s entry points? $0.055. In my voodoo that’s 1/100 of 5 1/2…or, perhaps, 1/10 of 9/16.
why mention that conversion? laws of a baltbear:” how do you make $$ on true “penny” stocks? u buys lottsa it.”

note that this entry price is wellll above the 52 week low…for reasons tba in this post…

here’s the story: pneumonia is still a major killer in the usa, and will be getting more that way as the idiots of the health care industry help more and stronger drug resistent versions of strep to evolve, kind of like the way stem cell ceos create evolutionary pressure favoring due diligence.

adls.ob claims, in a way the fda finds plausible to talk about, to have a 1x a day pill that slams into all these hard-guy germs. it says it has its ducks in a row to the point it can ask for fast track status for the investigation, etc.

the next “vaccine scare” that floats across the usa will loft this puppy like lbj with a beagle…regardless of the realitys involved. thus..a whore stock.

here’s why the story matters: like all these puppies, the books were a disaster; hence the fall from the last vaccine scare being like from 13/16 to 1/16. debt all over the place, no $ in the treasury, etc…
but, like isco.ob, some actual cash finds cred in the story. that includes the ceo/chief scientist. after a d/e swap, and a fair sized tranche, adls.ob is back in the hunt.  thus, never mind  if adls.ob has a cure for the nation’s worst epeidemic–dd failure–if there can never be entrance into the mkt place, and can never be attribution to common.

the target range for the prudent speculator is—as always–20% roi + shares cheaper than insiders to
30% roi, to 20% roi plus share at 0. that’s a narrow range here, because the current meaningful insider price is $0.022. and the puppy is sitting at 0.060…

this is thus a play money whore stock. ..with possible huge upside.

thru it’s own merits in execution of biz plan, combined with the inevitable next “plague stock rally”, 1 is doable. if i were advising adls.ob i’d be looking to move a large tranche @ 5/8ish at such a time…
and that’s a trip to 10bag city arizona for those who ignore whatever pump&bucket house that will work the deal.

i am neither recommending, nor not recommending adls.ob.

if this puppy looks good to you with ur own dd, well…there it is.

and again, fd: clients in adls.ob.

Posted under business

here are 2 dialogs to answer that ever popular question:

how do you give quantification to the future?

A day or 3 ago, isco.ob concluded a deal. the deal has terms. they are readable….but not yet filed with the sec (isco is draggy on that…)

the deal involves $10mm. to which i commented: so what?
the deal appears to value isco’s i/p at this moment at $40mm…to which i said, that’s a large “what.”

a sometimes intelligent person asked me:

:”Are you for real balt??????”

very much so…

:”(during these particular times), ”
u mean when capital is buying junk paper at rates that ensure the double dip???
are u watching the spread between t-bills and corporate junk?? that tells the prudent speculator that cash inflows for speculation are masssive. (people who think of tv as a news source get confused by the dow not being 18ooo or whatever, and think that means that there’s no capital to be had…but the ability of industry to float crap bonds at <6% says plenty of $$$ is chasing a home..)

:”does not dilute we shareholders,” if it had it would be negative….and not “so what”…
(people who think buying retail common shares of a puppy with no ebitda is “investing” usually end up double and triple counting any positives. “no change” = 0 …..not +.

:”comes through on it’s promise ” –if that isn’t pretty much a given, it’s worth 0.
so it gets no points for being above 0–it was already there.
(this same class of speculators and gamblers are so used to enabling mgt failure that mgt competence is read as a miracle. that is, mgt failure is the fault of a “weak market” “investor ignorance” “obama/bush/fda/reptiles from outer space, and mgt competence is a miracle who needs all our money—in spite of the obvious fact that retail purchase of common puts >>>no<<< money into corporate treasuries. it does make it much easier for insiders to raise capital by showing actual investors what the mkt is as they roll over their positions.)

:”while still being a developmental stage company”
that’s the btim koolaid on your breath…a puppy that has been “development stage” since 1992…

:”the company is pulling rabbits out of it’s hat ”
if i thought that…i’d tell clients to dump asap… there’s only so many rabbits in any given hat..

:”That is a big WHAT in my book. Bought more today.”
that’s nice. tiredof probably has a bridge in ft washington he can lease you cheap…if ak gets  a cut.
(that’s a reference to btim.amex, whose ceo holds himself out as the world’s #1 expert on stem cells, regardless of harvard, warf, etcetcetc… )

:”I would like to hear some of the directors that are responsible for closing these deals speak. ”
i want them to keep their mouths shut and keep working…but be able to do better than have i/r brag about minimal compliance on date of a 10q…

:”As far as ip goes, not possible to put a price on it yet”
that’s compleat nonsense. if u can;t put a price on something, the price is 0.

:”but 40 million? Ridiculously low. ”
well then, isco got screwed, didn;t it????
and all the ydydyydaaa smoke u said first means nothing.
(btim, frinstance, trades in part based on a putative valuation of a patent estate it >leases<, and of patent applications that are years from approval..and therefoire value @ ??? $.0.00 ..until cash flow from those patents is measurable.

:”You have 10 million people in need of corneas ”
that’s already been thoroly discussed..and comes down to 1 point:
that’;s nice–how much $$$ do they have?

:”it looks like we are there already” not to anyone who knows the drill. (actual IND, phase i,ii,iii, etc will require…2 years? 4? how many millions in paperwork??? enough for another tranche of funding to be necessary. but..in my analysis, isco can get seriuous and have the next tranche be > 1 7/16–which makes any buying now at retail the equivalent of “insider prices.”)

:”I could go on and on as I did before regarding all the other potential.”
yes…as you have, many times, without even beginning to do any actual dd…

:”The ip is likely worth much more then 40 million.”
whatever….then scream at aldrich how the krauts shafted him….

i am working from the data at hand:
somebody is excecuting a biz plan.
somebody who knows the biz says full access to 20% of the i/p is worth $10mm..

prudent speculators will note that this is a solid deal…and run their numbers, and run their voodoo.
and will be accumulating hard.

is the difference between these 2 pov obvious?? yeah. and yet, that poster is long isco, and i have clients long isco.

he’s long because isco management miraculously found $10mm.
i;m long because intelligent people ran a valuation, and thast valuation supports a price closer to 1 1/2 than 1…

he’s long isco because they’re going to growing eyeballs any day now.
i’m long becuase isco is steadily closing in on actual prodict and praxis that will lead to sales higher than overhead.

each decision i am making is based on a quant. that quant may be difficult to see—but if it can;t be seen, it’s worth 0.

no matter what the talk.

story stocks are about the odds of walking the talk.

from another board, a closely related discussion…what’s the “story” and what quants are there.
this one is a high point (in re the reduction in venom from a pawn of insider $$…) that also may help clarify to the prudent speculator what due diligence is.

:”BTIM sells stem cells and takes an interest in the upside of the discovery that may be created”
btim is certainly free to make such contracts with anyone who would fall for them….
on the other hand, millipore doesn’t.
:”Had You attended the annual meeting you would have known that, ” at the last ..lol..annual meeting, 9 months prior, numerous shareholders left with the understadning of how important rgi/nih direction was–and mikey was doing dog&pony on it—just a few days before nih said no.
and then it was never the plan at all.
now it is true that anytime mikey/garfies/ak/neal want to they can give judy $35 on her debit card and another “wholly owned subsidiary to…” can appear.
:”what makes Harvard the expert? only your opinion…”
rotfl….
u forgot to dis warf….
:”when anything comes Out in the Media, Dr West is the first person”
cuase he takes the call, knows how to put on makeup and can do 8 second soundbytes.
how come when there is a real peer review conference on stem cells, mikey is always too busy hyping whatever puppy he’s doing to have actual work to present?
:”plan to be the picks & shovels supplier dictates constant predictable cash flow, thus steady long term growth, once again, ”
yup. totallllly. yup. u betcha..of course, that discounts ur opening point, unless dealing with somebody so broke that they pay for picks and shovels by offering a shares in the mine…which is not predictiable cash flow.
:”just like anything the components cost bucks and one company can get rich creating the components, to deny that is foolish…”
yes. one company can–if it has both first mover and quasi-monopoly…like 65% of potentuial mkt share… it’s sometehing i read for when i’m looking at proposals.
or–if it can be made cheap enuff, and then have a ginormous markup for convenience.
:”Millipor picked Biotime,” not in evidence as to who went to whom… even if mil initaited, yeah, they were adding stem cells to the mix..a 150 page catalog…which was 150 pages thick when btim signed on to have 2 items in it.

:”post their names,”
post urs…u impotent boytoy poser…

:”look at calculators”…yeah..go ahead..look…i watched the price of a hot handheld ti move from $1200 to $10 for the same functions over 8 years…and to $1 over the next 5.
cars? tata is on ther mkt at like $2600….

:”and Balt not all lottery tickets are a buck,” i’ll take ur word for it…not a part of my portfolio strategy…

:”and insiders continue to invest more funds,”
yup. so determining >>>>their basis<<<< is the issue.
and those who like this puppy should be trading to get a basis like that of insiders…which is close to 0.

(this cannot be stressed enough. the prudent speculator should not be lazarus at the gate, waiting for a dog to lick his wounds. the prudent speculator does not homage the insiders and grant them some natural right to more profits. if insiders will finance so that gthey are functionallly in @ $1–then prudent speculators will trade to that basis. “buy and hold” is an abomination–a false god that lets the pumpers, bucket shops, and insiders keep drawing their bonuses at the speculator’s expense, usually by telling him he is an “investor.” )

:”so he helped me make over 1000% on my money, not you.. ”
u’ve reported before being in this puppy at 4ish ion the way down…or 4ish on the way up the first time after ak came on board…

but u are in fact making the critical point again: those in this puppy <2 have reason to like it a lot.
that has nothing >>>>at all<<<< to do with it at 5 3/8…

(another example of the same problem. the most generous estimate i can give for btim prices 2 1/4. insider finance games keep it above 4. the principal insider is in close to 0. so unless this puppy were offered at <2 1/2….it’s overpriced. can you buy 5 1/2, sell 7, keeping enough shares to share a few odd lots at insiders prices? then, if you like this puppy, go for it. if not, then you’re cannon fodder for the gamers.)

:”sees upside 100 times where the stock is today”
nope…he sees 100x growth in gross revs for the sector.

(Another point that cannnnot be stressed enough. the common stock of a given equity is not the sector, and historically, about 85% of everything goes broke without affecting the sector’s long time story arc. the prudent speculator is invited to read the history of railroad industry financing…hehe)

the issue is how much of that goes to btim ebitda..

that’s “worth” 1 7/8–2 1/2… ak will keep this puppy 4 — 6 with occasional spikes..and keep getting shares at $0 net..

prudent speculators will do the same.

if its 100% your money, your ability to beleive stock board “guidance” is set at 0%.

so…yes. you can quant a fairy tale. one piece of straw at a time.

Posted under business

“In 2005, Nicholas Negroponte  — co-founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab — unveiled a prototype of a $100 laptop for children in the developing world. India rejected that as too expensive and embarked on a multiyear effort to develop a cheaper option of its own.

Negroponte’s laptop ended up costing about $200, but in May his nonprofit association, One Laptop Per Child, said it plans to launch a basic tablet computer for $99.

Sibal turned to students and professors at India’s elite technical universities to develop the $35 tablet after receiving a “lukewarm” response from private sector players. He hopes to get the cost down to $10 eventually.”

MIT’s Media Lab should be one of America’s “elite technincal universities.” One upon a time it was–and still, probably, is.

In comments about this cited news release, at yahoo, the overwhelming response from Americans was that noting is made in America, this device will suck, it’ll be a cool toy. that last comment was the most intelligent, because those who made it usually said that their buying one would support the project.

Evidently, based on pure numbers, pure quant, pure “science” says that MIT made too many decisions that supported profits for the “cool people”.

The MIT  project depends on $100 per unit subsidy from taxpayers of some kind.
:”India plans to subsidize the cost of the tablet for its students, bringing the purchase price down to around $20.” That’s not a difference of just $85 per unit, it is a critical difference of 60% vs 100%.
There is an obvious Forex-like arb in currency conversion, but the % is what it is, and nothing else.

This device from India probably won’t have the panache and real world support of an i-Pad.
Assuming it works 1/3 as well, a retail buyer can get 5 of them, and run them til they break,
and be a full 50% ahead of buying an i-Pad.

But, without cultural changes, they won’t be “cool people.”

America is becoming a nation of “cool people” who have nothing but their self-absorption, living on borrowed money.  o, wait–it always was. the “money” was first the entire capital wealth of the first natrions people from the Quahog to the Lakota. Then it was the entire prodictive output of 100,000,000 slaves and “push” delivered “immigrants” (as opposed to the African slaves who were “pull” delivered.)

and then, in a “better” world, leaving people where they were, and importing their capital assets–neo-colonialism–and then, for the past generation, just importing their money–at interest.

What has America exported to balance this? belief systems it didn’t want. these were workable belief systems, as India, China, and others have shown. but they just weren’t cool anymore.

When the prudent speculator sees some stem cell stock going overseas to get work done, this is not because the USA can’t do it…but because the insiders at that puppy are working for “coolness”–profits on the books. the question then is where does this coolness flow: to the insiders or to common stock. The easy way to measure is whether the non-USA partners are putting skin in the game, or is the “foreign outreach” based on tax scams and buddy-buddy “cool people” partnerships.

Posted under business

Prudent speculators will often be accused of all kinds of things.

Here’s an example of a simple baltbear (your very own host here)  being

accused (in a 3rd person remark..that is..a lack of direct dialog)
“. I personally think he has an agenda which I have told him directly and

the negativity toward the investments of ISCO”

So what’s  with the “negative”??

readers familiar with my pov on isco will note i have 3 clients in isco.ob at

this time. They got there “because I said so.” They are all 3 >>slightly<<

in profit, becuase i got them in after the 1 7/16 support line cracked durin

the series f preferred offering.

But i expect isco to head towards 2 1/2— a near double from here… and

then drift towards 4… after it >proves< something.

Cause in actual bizness–not perpetual stock scams—mgt executes in a

way that can be proven in audited filings—it’s called “revenue.”

That gives me an “agenda.” I don’t tell people isco.ob is going to 10, or

20, or 320….or …whatever…

and there it is….

On the board where isco is being discussed there are 6 or 10 posters
muttering about prices north of 4…without having read the filings that

formed isco in the first place.

this same alleged heavy  hitter  who accused me of “having an agenda”

thought isco.ob was ipo’d on its own name. Thinking such a thing means

they have never read the filings, which show it being a double reverse

merger shell property. ….not that there’s anything wrong with that. doing

so can save more than a few $$$ getting listed.

There’s nothing wrong with that at all. Such a procedure can save

thousands of dollars in useless fees to lawyers and other scum and

basically, i am increasingly convinced over the past 2 years that keeping

lawyers and other scum  as far away from biz formations as possible is

prudent speculation by the entrepreneur.

reducing lawyer exposure and double talk of any kind is something clients

pay me for–and it is usually more rewarding than listening to inventors

dreams of being worth $xyz million any day now….

But since this isco formation is not exactly ancient history, and is publicly

available from the sec, >not knowing it<< is a signal of something–

specifically, lack of prudence.

prudent speculators >>>always<<< read the original s3s…

back to isco.ob: i say this is a place to start nibbling, isco.ob because

2 1/2 is coming back… and that’s “negative” in the minds of those who,

over and over, say “it’s different this time” whether this time is real

estate, the internet, stem cells, “plastics” –going back to “tulips.” (for

those who have taken their proper classes in the art of the arb, for 1k

years before tulips came along, it was usually?  ….wait for it…….
black pepper.

when everyone agrees about how great prospects are it’s time to look

for the koolaid pitcher that is feeeding the hypnotic agreement.

those who doubt this are cordially invited to read the chaerts of aig, fnm,

wamu (o wait, it’s wamu>>q<<) citibank, et al.

personally and professionally i don;t think >>anyone<< is without an

agenda.
the issue is…what >>is<< the agenda, and do you benefit or suffer

by working for/against it…

as an example of objectivity let’s take this statement about the market

size for synthetic corneas :”going blind or had vision problems that could

be rectified by a pair of corneas, I would pay just about anything.”

uhuh…so, that only says u have $$.

it is a fundamental law of econ that u cannot spend more than u have +

what others think u can pay back…unless you steal.

so, towards dd, what % of “10mm people need corneas” can get their

hands on …let’s call it, just to be as long as possible on isco….

$3000????

data? source of data?

the prudent speculator will be finding some dang way that has meaning to

him to look for such numbers.

in the course of the average week i do about 10 hours of reading ranging

from “vogue” to patent filings looking to see what active market

participants actuallly think….not what stock promoters, bucket shops, and

cult members want thought.

for instance, i  can cheeerfully see isco licensing the tech so that

somebody in bumphreakistan gets eyesight, and isco gets
~$15 per event.
that might be 3mm custoimers over 10 years @????
let’s go conservative and say 50mm o/s….. 9 cents a share >>>straight

to the bottom line<<<<…

and people get to see. and isco gets to have a reasonable “fair value” of

4-6…

but pumpers don’t get houses by the lake.

and that is why so many voices on random stock boards see me as a

“basher.”

when somebody wants you to listen to their investment strategy, ask for

their agenda. If they say they have none….run away.

mine is based on observing this item of “laws of a baltbear”
“some want to be sharks, some want to be dolphins–nobody wants to be

tuna.”

if you are nobody–feel free to see if i’m available for consultation.

fd: 3 clients long isco.
and..btw…in my professional and personal opinion the odds on isco

paying corp income taxes during my lifetime are about….zilch, but the

odds on enuff gross revs to support developing i/p without more than one

more round of dilution, and further developing i/p that makes “the story”

“worth” 4 in the next couple years 1/3–but the odds on a rebound to 2

1/2 goood enuff to load up on.
that is neither a recommendation nor an anything…
it just is.

Posted under business