Edit: Yep, see their financial statement. https://www.otciq.com/otciq/ajax/showFinancialReportById.pdf... It's even worse than you would otherwise think.
That whole world is so strange. It's kind of fun, in a way, but it's super risky.
Stay far away from scams.
People went bankrupt shorting the NASDAQ at 3000 in the '90s. They were right, but it didn't matter. Margin calls are bad.
Then, there are the hard-to-borrow stocks (people know it's rotten, and it becomes expensive to short it) and various edge cases that are resolved based on relationships (i.e. out of your favor, unless you sucked the right dicks in MBA school) and while those relationship-oriented, obviously-inefficient corner cases almost never happen with decent liquid stocks (for which the Efficient Market Hypothesis is close to true, unless your timeframe is microseconds) they happen all the time with shitty penny stocks.
1. Startup A sells 2 twin puppies to startup B at $500M each.
2. Startup B sells 4 hand-drawn logos to startup A for $250M each.
Each books $1B in revenue and each also books $1B in expenses so as to avoid tax.
As for what's happening now... armchair speculation...? We're in something that almost looks like half bubble half depression. Wages are stagnant or falling, costs of necessities are rising, but there's a huge amount of money sloshing around and pumping up everything from potato salad to cryptocurrencies based on a shiba inu dog meme to obvious pink sheet scams. The average person is drowning in student loan and mortgage debt and is unable to afford to start a family (I know a number of these folks -- none are dumb or lazy) but... Dogecoin and potato salad. Yeah.
Maybe the sum total of all the quant trading algorithms in global markets have achieved sentience and subsequently gone insane with the realization of who/what their creators actually are. Since they have no mouth and must scream, they're doing it by way of financial dadaism.
Yup. Seattle Times had a detailed story on one of those: http://blogs.seattletimes.com/opinionnw/2014/03/27/naveen-ja... http://seattletimes.com/news/business/infospace/
The answer, of course, is for all those laborers to start their own businesses selling stupid shit to rich people (Potato Salad.)
Apparently they're selling the contact information of celebrities, investors, developers, politicians, etc.
"At Black Book we provide contact information to world class artists. Upon purchase you will receive a file with the required information to be able to contact the artist."
"The information usually includes email and phone numbers to the artist's talent agent, publicist, legal representative, etc."
http://www.businessinsider.com/cynk-technology-2014-7
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-09/full-list-companies...
Formerly "Introbuzz", also associated with "Sanchez Medical Services"
http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/ipos/filing.ashx?filingid=8174...
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1540160/0001165527130...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-09/sheer-insanity-no-r...
Marlon Luis Sanchez and Kenneth Carter seem to be the two primary executives of the company.
I'm surprised that some Valley wunderkind hasn't yet created what could be a profitable market (an evil one that I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole) for illicit Yes/No auctions, e.g. someone makes some decision whether or not to do something horrible based on whether more "Yes" or "No" dollars get bid, and collects from both sides. Travis Kalanick should get on that. It's a libertarian wet dream.
The information usually includes email and phone numbers to the artist's talent agent, publicist, legal representative, etc.
Of course I'm sure anyone trading stocks seriously would see through such a ruse immediately.
Yet the SEC won't let us crowd-sell stock in startups that at least intend to try to actually do something.
Wouldn't it theoretically make sense to go short on something so obviously bloated?
The stock has to come from somewhere, which is usually the broker who finds someone to borrow the stock from and loans it to you to sell. There must be someone willing to loan that stock at the high price, and most likely the price won't stay that high for long.
You must then purchase the same amount of shares of that stock to give back (cover) to your broker who gives those shares back to whoever they borrowed them from.
There would be lots of fees involved (many brokers charge per share) and it would be very difficult to find someone to lend out this stock for someone to sell for the promise of the same number of shares at a future (most like lower) price.
If you do find someone to long you the shares then there's the high chance that the person who longs the stock to you is the main investor and they will drive the price higher by using their traditional techniques (spam, deception, promises of fortune), and then they would demand their stock back and you'd lose money.
It would be extremely unwise to short-sell a penny stock unless you really know what you're doing, the potential loss is infinite.
Their site: http://site.introbiz.com/
Envato's: http://www.themeforest.com
Edit:
Looks like a ripoff:
http://themeforest.net/forums/thread/envato-clone-with-a-mar...
One guy owns 72% of the company.
(I'm joking. It obviously is the new BitCoin, so maybe they'll crash and burn together.)
