Bebida Beverage Co. (BBDA);
Blue Sphere Corporation (BLSP);
Ehouse Global Inc. (EHOS);
Eventure Interactive Inc. (EVTI);
Eyes on the Go Inc. (AXCG);
Green Energy Enterprises Inc. (GYOG);
Helix Wind Corp. (HLXW);
International Power Group Ltd. (IPWG);
Marani Brands Inc. (MRIB);
MediaTechnics Corp. (MEDT);
Net Talk.com Inc. (NTLK);
Patten Energy Solutions Group Inc. (PTTN);
PTA Holdings Inc. (PTAH);
Universal Apparel & Textile Company (DKGR);
Wisdom Homes of America Inc. (WOFA).
The SEC also recently issued orders temporarily suspending trading in:
Bangi Inc. (BNGI);
Sylios Corp. (UNGS);
Marathon Group Corp. (PDPR);
Affinity Beverage Group Inc. (ABVG);
All Grade Mining Inc. (HYII);
SpectraScience Inc. (SCIE).
The price has been a solid $0.00 for over six years. 100% worthless
Then a few days ago it suddenly jumps to $0.0013
Sounds like the SEC have found a bunch of social media accounts in the early stage of doing a classic Pump & Dump on worthless penny stocks. Nothing at all to do with WSB
That's 90% of WSB, seeing a ticker and rocket emoji and YOLOing into the latest stock because someone said it was going up. Why is this different?
And these are OTC, pink slip stocks. Most major brokerages don't carry them and people who trade them know they're investing in distressed companies with low liquidity.
Sure, go after the pump & dumpers, but it's not clear what the criteria is for halting trading on a stock.
Risk is inherent in any investment. Don't invest what you're not willing to lose because you could lose everything. Your investment can always go to 0, wether it's in stocks, bonds, real estate or a business. And don't invest in what you don't understand.
Is it like making link farms to game Google but in this case they are gaming the stock market?
If so, the issue is the algorithm.
If that's the case, good.
https://redditsearch.io/?term=Ehos%20&dataviz=false&aggs=fal...
Not only but if you search reddit for these stock tickers you'll see very little other than the suspension notice. Take HLXW for instance - 1 mention in the past year. (https://old.reddit.com/search?q=HLXW&restrict_sr=&sort=relev...)
The exceptions to this are PTTN & BLSP, which both have some low vote count posts - but there's always some brigade trying to pump something on reddit, why not the 100 or so other tickers as well?
PTTN and BLSP for instance, is listed amongst 'IGEN HPST GRNF IPNFF VMNT RNWF SHMN ZNOG COUV VISM CBBT BRTX ISWH TSNP ENZC PUGE ATVK BRLL NECA OPTI GMEV TTCM PMPG TSPG OZSC FORW BLSP GTLL PTTN VPER AGGI CTLE BLDV NWTT PVDG UATG MICT RSSV PPBT AKBA DSGT GRCV NAKD ACB ALPP BLSP GM TRUP' in 2 posts, what about the others? - feel free to cross-compare the list btw, I did. Those are the only 2 crossovers. A direct link to the hype post: https://old.reddit.com/user/pennystockguyz/comments/lf8zhg/h...
The claim of 'the latest in a string of temporary trading halts amid volatile trading in so-called “meme stocks.”' needs more information. Does the SEC have some criteria that doesn't include reddit (for instance, some scammer paying for facebook ads to unsavvy investors claiming "HLXW is the next gamestop")?
The SEC in https://www.sec.gov/litigation/suspensions/2021/34-91213.pdf uses the words "certain social media accounts may be engaged in a coordinated attempt to artificially influence their share prices." alright, let's take it on good faith. It's not happening on reddit. Somewhere else maybe?
The only thing I can find is on twitter. The political class likes to pretend people care about twitter wayy more than they actually do. If you look for say, HLXW and let's just pick PTTN https://twitter.com/search?q=HLXW%20PTTN&src=typed_query&f=l... and scroll scroll scroll you'll see a few mentions, is that it? Things like this? https://twitter.com/AlexDelarge6553/status/13605979641719808... ... there's our IPWG, MRIB, BBDA and EVTI, we have 6 matches in that post. If this was a source, what about the others 16 in that list? Even if it's some incompetent DC person impressed by 24 retweets, it's still only a 27% crossover.
Is it this And weird trading patterns? Do they have some undisclosed tripwire model with conditions (say, some X trading pattern followed by some Y "influence metric" followed by some Z pattern?). And if this exists, shouldn't there be some disclosure so that innocent investors know what to avoid and when to divest? I always check reddit before I invest to make sure there's not some hypetrain bubble behind the security.
Also there's real people behind all these companies who, I assume, are just trying to do an honest job of overseeing waste management facilities or whatever these companies do. I'm sure they don't appreciate scammers playing around with their stock and getting it suspended and thus probably scaring off their actual investors.
Whatever it is, this isn't the full story.
What in that headline implies anything about Gamestop?
You can suspend them if insiders have suspicious social media behavior.
very easy to do a "pump and dump" scheme especially in the digital or social media age
This isn't NYSE or NASDAQ. Not all retail brokerages support OTC markets although it's become much more common in the past year or two. Even then it's usually partial support. Here's the instrument list https://www.otcmarkets.com/corporate-services/company-direct...
They've been generally discouraged (and thus not supported) for retail investors due to their complexity and risks, similar to derivatives and futures, which are still quite exotic to find in retail brokerages
You can also get foreign stocks over the counter (select by country from the link above). There's an ADR 30 similar to the DJIA index. You've likely heard of many of them https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OTCM_QX_ADR_30_Index . You can say, invest in Lenovo or Fujitsu via OTC. It's not everything, but it's the ones people are generally interested in.
It's exotic because if Lenovo doesn't move but say the Yuan does, then your dollar value does too. Also there's different fee schedules often for foreign investors (that's you here), etc. The complexity tries to be smoothed out by the brokerages (firstrade has offered otc since 2010, recommended if you want to give OTC a try* ) but it's not as simple as buying a bit of General Motors
And lastly, some, like Taiwan Liposome Company (TLC), get traded on NASDAQ using ADR schemes (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/adr.asp)
* - shameless signup referral for a free stock: https://share.firstrade.com/CHRISTOPHVR08 ... If you were going to try it anyways, might as well
I am a mod on r/WallStreetBets and wanted to share with you that our bots haven't seen any of the tickers mentioned in the SEC press release.
We filter tickers based on a number of factors, but low market cap (below $1B), is the most common reason for content being removed.
One of our biggest issues is data reliability. If you know of an API that can provide accurate data and an exhaustive list of tickers (especially on non-US exchanges), please reach out to our modmail. [0]
Best,
OIP
[0] https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fwallstreetb...
Happy to discover I’m not understanding the situation, but that seems absolutely bonkers to me. Does Reddit not have any lawyers?
Yes, Reddit would have other options of course. But they all cost money, so they wouldn't do it. Spez would just nuke WSB and move on with his day, secure in the belief that he saved Reddit from an SEC fine or whatever.
Reddit's lawyers are probably the reason why it's framed as Reddit hosting "a community" whose users can have moderation ability instead of framing them as "Reddit moderators", RE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_Community_Leader_Program#D...
IE, the "look how much reddit is exploiting these people" implication is unwarranted.
I'm only fetching US and Canadian stocks from iexcloud and I've got around 24k of those. It's possible to fetch stocks from other countries but it seems most companies mentioned on Reddit are listed in a US exchange anyway.
For example
Subject: AAPL is awesome
Message: Generalizing My Equations in a very interesting way ...
When the mods catch on this and write bots to deal with it, we invent a new language. It's faster to invent codes than for mods to write bots so they can never keep up.
To your point, a "secret language" is only useful if it can evade detection and remain in use.
The former is difficult because moderators spend an inordinate amount of time perusing the subreddit.
The latter requires a sufficiently large "speaker base" in order for messages not to go unnoticed, discouraging speakers. This can be solved by making the "secret language" more accessible (that is, more obvious to new "speakers", but also mods) or by sharing the keys to the language through other channels (which, to some extent, defeats the point of using the subreddit).
What tends to happen more often is users using emojis to bypass filters. E.g. CC $eye_emoji V to represent CCIV, or the SOS emoji to represent SOS. Another strategy is obfuscating the message with interspersed noise, E.g. "A-,-A---P,,,L".
Generally speaking, these have the same pitfalls as mentioned above and are caught quickly.
If it's illegal, say a company or investor in that company created a bunch of social media bots to convince others to buy into the companies stock - then they'll get to hire a lawyer and go to court, get fined, etc.
Algo amplification of content needs a timeout and a redesign.
Just look at HN. No one knows what will show up tomorrow morning. No one knows whether it will waste their time or be useful. Yet everyone shows up to consume the stream. And Like the SEC the mods have to react and counter react to what ever the hell happens.
If a simple HN algo amplification model has no roadmap to improvement cause no one really knows what to do about it, then to expect a roadmap to emerge in much more complex environments like Reddit, YouTube, Twitter, FB etc is delusional.
Therefore to prevent the constant periodic randomness injection into society that algo amplification of content produces, all algo amplification of all type of content should be put on hold.
The SEC and the regulatory complex as a whole is more generally concerned with market integrity.
Statements like "social media attempts to artificially inflate their stock price" sound quite solid but is actually a nightmare to define directly. But, working definitions and action-inducers are usually related to market integrity issues.
After that you should be able to buy a lootbox of stocks and receive fragments of penny stocks for watching videos.
Do we really need the extra steps?
Also check the previous years, they appear to be archived static pages as opposed to say a database query populating a template - really makes me wonder how this site is built.
Now I understand why Dr evil from Austin powers ran a corporation.
There are countless examples. I have an LLC. Self employed. People making minimum wage are getting $1.4k checks. The single owner LLC's (with max'ed out payroll capped at $100k), through PPP single owner LLCs get maxiumum $20.83k. It's never been more clear to me the slant to trusting corps over people. Also my business allows me to write off way more than a typical American Citizen.
My recommendation: equality with corps will be a near-impossible fight for someone like me, so all US citizens should have a personal business even if it is only making paper losses.
This just seems like worries that the villagers are figuring out ways to band together and the rulers are scared.
It’s the biggest misconception of this entire meme stock phenomenon.
It's not so much different that people banding together to pump a stock.
EDIT: I don't defend GME, imo it is a pump and dump. But how can SEC can regulate equally for this specific issue?
The definition of "pump & dump" is to make false or misleading statements in order to get the price to go up, so that you can sell. It is not free market activity; it is fraud.
"In economics, a free market is a system in which the prices for goods and services are self-regulated by the open market and by consumers. In a free market, the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government or other authority"
If you outlaw pump and dump scams, it's not a free market. I tend towards favoring less government rather than more, but I wouldn't invest in stocks in any sort of free market environment.
The “pump” is the action of fraudulently inducing someone to buy the security which is against the law.
Still, the consequence may be that the social media activity moves to venues that the SEC can't observe as easily.
In that case... good! The whole point of a pump & dump is that you get other people to bump the price for you, then you sell, and leave everyone else holding the bag. If they can't do it on social media, then they can't do it at all. It's not like selling drugs where people are going to move to some kind of black market for stock tips. It's just not going to be out there, so people won't fall for it because it won't exist anymore. Mission accomplished in my opinion.
Unless you plan to run a pump & dump scheme through Twitter/Facebook DMs?
I don’t know what the fed’s objective is anymore (actually ever), but a successful nation is one in which people are not concerned with finances at all, except that they put their minds and hands to socially-positive activity. Now our savings account is an endless gamble on stocks. Might as well be sports betting; that’s at least a lot more transparent.
I don’t want to put 10 seconds a year into thoughts about finances, taxes, housing costs, inflation, deflation, interest rates, stocks, bonds, Bitcoin, or whatever. But their policies are forcing me and so many other people to put our whole lives into it. It’s probably 80% of the economy right now, totally wasted on a few people’s failed theories about macroeconomics, the same people over and over again, covering for their mistakes with new failing theories and policies. Unfortunately we can’t just write it down mathematically, program it into a computer, release source, and be done with it. No; it’s based on their personal feelings at any given moment. Oh and by the way, it all just so happens to make them and their families and friends and business and religious associates impossibly wealthy. Must be because they “understand” more than we do. Sure.
I wonder if they ever think, “hey, maybe if we want less financial manipulation, we should stop doing it ourselves.” (Not the SEC; they just react.)
You should not be an investor. You should save until you have everything you’ll ever need, and then invest in things you know about, and only because the money is going toward something productive and socially-valuable, as in the society that you, individually, want to live in. This is the most powerful form of voting. Index funds don’t solve the problem. That’s just paying someone else to steal your vote.
If you denounce the stock at the same time as you sell it, you are also fine.
If you promote-and-sell* or denounce-and-buy, the SEC will be contacting you for assistance in their ongoing investigation.
*pump-and-dump
I’m long AMC sub $10 :p
How so? Pre-pandemic AMC was at $7 per share, which might seem reasonable compared to the current $8 share price until you realize they diluted their shares by more than 3X during the pandemic via ATM offerings.
For AMC's current valuation to match pre-pandemic levels, the share price would have to fall by ~75%.
I do think the coronavirus lockdown might have created more people that found they didn't miss the theater than those that did. And it also opened up faster to video channels that might be difficult to take back.
Every investor Should be aware of the risk that they could lose everything and that markets, whether we like it or not, are manipulateable.
Let them run wild.
Every generation thinks they invented scams.
"FEC suspends [nothing] due to questionable social media activity"
A simple search on pushshift is enough to show that their auto mod wasn’t quick enough at all.
