Baltbear on Finance markets are like marshmallows

in a recent discussion about outstanding shares, authorised shares, and the point of re-allocating shareholder interest per share–which is either reduce it by increasing the number of shares–a “split”
or increasing it by reducing the number of shares - a “reverse split”-some classically amateur newbies suggested that “reverse splits are bad” or …. not much of anything else.
finally some body noted:

:”dont have a sellable product yet, why would they want to be listed?

They clearly dont care too much about the average investor, but a resverse split would tank this stock, ”

well…yes. corporations do >>not<< “get listed” because they have sellable product, or have some deep seated desire to care about other than themselves.

corporations do a “public offering” because they have a desire to get capital.

it is quite possible to get blue-sky’d on the premise that u are nothing but blue sky.
(which, btw, is the porigin of the term for doing some sort of filing–show that u are offering something other than the blue skys of kansas.)

“going public” is a broad area, defined by “how public??”

all over the world are mkt places where people who concern themselves with these pieces of paper and the putative wish list and blue sky they represent meet one way or another to “exchange” the pieces of paper –or database entries changing which name is associated with a piece of paper. to be considered as a reasonable candidate to be entered into the database –”get listed” –a corporation needs to meet certain standards unique to that mktplace, the exchange.
:”why would they want to be listed?”
did u ever wonder what that funny .ob (which back in the day was :obb) >>>>means<<<< ????
it means its “listed” on a list of ..lists.
certain lists have certain requirements.
it isn;t the list that comes and goes, its the criteris meeting that changes.
nyse–>amex–>pink
nasd.nm–>nasd.sc–>nasd.ob–> pink.

and actuallllllly… pink is a national exchange, and there are levels below it.

if “pink sheet” doesn;t sound like a wildly old time valid national exchange, ur probably unaware that until ruffly the 70’s and the majjjor ag rollups, “equity” was traded pink,
“beef” green, and if a swiss cheese memory serves, the reange live hogs to smoked bacon was traded in the blue sheet.

thus, when somebody says–like btim did a year or so ago–that it’s business plan was focussed on “moving from .ob to amex” it was only saying it wanted a beter chjance to get other people’s money.
when adls.ob contemplates a reverse split, it is doing the same.

since neither ticker could go anywhere without opm, the issue is not “moving up” or “getting ready to be sluaghtered” it is, in reality, what is mgt gonna do with the opm????

btim said,. …well, be us..cuase we are all that and a bag of stem cells.
adls.ob appears to my eyes to be saying get thru a previously approved fda protocol and place product.

both tickers face about the same amount of obstacle to get to $20mm gross…
btim has cash on hand, adls,. zilch.
btim tradeds 100x higher than adls.

2+ years ago btim had less cash than adls does now.

for maybe $2k loose chanhge (laws of a baltbear: risk tolerance has metricks) you can bet on either.

the ball has landed on btim like 12x in a row; hasn’t landed on adls more than 2x in its lifetime.

when somebody tells you “reverse split is bad” what they are referring to is the history of people falsely assoicatiing names and numbers “goog is a $500 stock selling at $460, i must buy it” “xyzd is a $2 stock selling at 10..im ust sell it”

if nobody has evvver heard of the puppy, they cannot think this way…

if serious and scummy $ know that something –like bpur–is bogus, they just keep hitting it, at any price…aiming @ 0.

fd: clients in adls;
fd; clients have paid me top keep them out of btim–with $ they paid me to keep them from believing that $1800 gold would happen in 2010.

does your advisor charge u just for holding ur $$???

i charge mine for clarifying the stories they hear elsewhere.
it’s their $$–and they can hold their own wallets.

Posted under business

So, here is today’s amusing headline:

Investors scrambled to assess potential losses from an alleged $50 billion fraud by Bernard Madoff, a day after the arrest of the prominent Wall Street trader.

Prosecutors and regulators accused the 70-year-old former chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market of masterminding a Ponzi scheme of epic proportions through a hedge fund he ran.
Why does “nasdaq” and “fraud” seem to fit so well together nto a sentence?
This one personally disappoints me, because it means the “salad oil swindle” and ira haupt, one of whose executors was my mentor in things about the nyse, amex, et al is no longer the all-time winner for securities fraud.
Some analysts noted that it was obvious for a ong time that something as badly wrong with the funds madoff ran, by dint of consistently high returns. They bragged abut how they were too prudet to be sucked in.
How many of them honoured their professional ethics well enough to put pressure onto anyone to run the numbers?
None. Why? Becuase there is no basic regulation of transparency for hedge funds.
This derives from their relationship to “selling long for later delivery”–short selling. The existence of shorts and hedge funds depends on the ethical stance that th herd needs culled, and those who are skilled at it must be the lions, and therefore cool.
If you are a lion, this is logical. In fact, i find it the highest ethical stance.
This theme is iterated by eli wallach n the maginificent seven: “if God did not want them shorn, why did he make them sheep?” REaders may wish to recall that wallach was not the hero of that tale. the heroes were the peasants who worked the land, brought in the crops and kept going. They got some help from 7 losers needing redemption.
In nature, lions are balanced by elephants, rhincoceros, crocodiles, etc when they get too eager to etend their range. In fact, they get gored, tossed, then stomped.
In the traditional pure capitalist–not oligarchical elitist game called laissez faire–but pure adam smith capitalism, government exists as the elephant with the tusks and the feet to make sure the lion behaves.
This is something the sec, the fed res, conngress, etc might wish to recall, when not busy pretending to be lion kings themselves. The last 16 years has produced more than enough losers needing redemption.
Prompt reporting of short interest, sec filings for hedge funds handling more than $1 mil, and elimination of inter-locking directorships are things a transparent liquid liquid market needs, in the face of a liquidity crisis.

Posted under business