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AGORACOM Sponsors PDAC 2008

Posted by AGORACOM at 6:16 PM on Thursday, February 14th, 2008

We’re proud to announce that AGORACOM is once again sponsoring the PDAC Convention. This is the world’s biggest mining and exploration conference, with over 18,000 delegates attending from all over the world.

AGORACOM will once again be providing real-time quotes via a couple of 50 inch screens at our booth, as well as, via wireless laptops around the floor. If you love the big screen TV’s but don’t have one yet, we’ll be giving away one of them at the convention, so make sure to come by.

With gold, silver, copper, platinum and other metals hitting multi-year highs, this year’s conference promises to be the best ever.

p.s. Look for AGORACOM to announce the best hospitality suite ever hosted at PDAC. Hint…poker…food….drinks….models….$10,000…BAM!

Regards,
George

Financial Sense Interviews Me About The Status Of 1st Gen Discussion Forums

Posted by AGORACOM at 1:45 AM on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008

 

Good evening/morning to everyone. After a grueling but great week in New York in which AGORACOM sponsored Money:Tech and I had the good fortune of witnessing the Times Square Super Bowl celebration, I’m back to posting on the blog and starting it off with a doozy as Jim Puplava of Financial Sense tackles the problem of unmonitored stock discussion forums full of profanity, spam and everything else but civility.

 

Big time thanks to AGORACOM member/HUB Leader/champion/friend Crowlee for alerting Jim to the fact our 2nd generation stock discussion forums are solving the problem. You can listen to the complete interview here (it starts about 1/4 of the way). You can also access it here and select your preferred media player.

By the way, if you are looking for great and objective financial info/analysis, Financial Sense is a great resource. Jim Puplava and his team go out of the way to provide information that helps investors – no matter how much it might hurt to hear – which is a far throw from most of of today’s financial media.

More than just lip service, Financial Sense has an Alexa ranking above 54,000…close enough to chomp on our heels at 35,000.

Congrats to Jim and his team for choosing the path less taken.

Regards,
George

 

 

 

AGORACOM Sponsors PIPEs 2007; Presentation – How To Turn The Web Into Your IR Machine

Posted by AGORACOM at 8:33 AM on Friday, February 8th, 2008

AGORACOM was once again the proud Investor Relations Sponsor of The PIPEs Conference in New York. This conference has become the largest and most important event on Wall Street for those of us in the small and micro-cap space. The team at DealFlow Media continue to put together an agenda that creates a great mix of education and networking.

As the IR Sponsor, AGORACOM provided the entire audience with a keynote presentation titled “How To Use The Web To Find New Investors and Turn Them Into An IR Machine”. It was a concise but strong presentation that covered how to use Google to find new investors and Community to keep them both together and spreading the word for you. Pretty powerful stuff as you will see.

Reaction was so positive that many of those in attendance asked for a copy of the presentation. It also made sense to provide it for those of you that could not attend this year (but should be attending next year).

Ask and you shall receive. Please view the presentation here. It also includes Q&A from the audience, so any questions you have were probably asked by a delegate.

Enjoy and contact me to discuss further.

Regards,
George

AGORACOM Hits 27,000,000 Page Views In 3 Months

Posted by AGORACOM at 5:38 PM on Monday, February 4th, 2008

It gives me great pleasure to announce that AGORACOM has recorded 26,802,451 page views in the first 3 full months since we announced the launch of our wiki-powered “Investor Controlled Discussion Forums” on October 11, 2007.

When we made first made the announcement, we set out to destroy the stock discussion forum status quo that we have all come to hate over the past 10 years thanks to unrelenting spam, profanity, stock bashing, stock hyping and assorted noise. Many thought it could not be done because we could neither change habits nor unseat the incumbents. We not only knew we could, we knew that we would. Now, more than lip service, the following numbers speak for themselves:

THE TALE OF THE TAPE

(Figures for November 2007 to January 2008. All figures reported by Google Analytics)

  • Page Views 26,802,451
  • Visits 1,776,973
  • Unique Visitors 296,610
  • Pages Per Visit 15.08
  • Avg Time On Site 10:55
  • Number Of Countries/Territories 187
  • Top 10 (Canada, USA, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, UK, Sweden, Mexico, Switzerland, Austria)

The numbers look even better when you consider:

  • December 10 – January 7 is pretty much a write-off for financial discussion.
  • The numbers stem from pure discussion. No spam, flaming and bickering traffic.

HAPPY TO SEE A HAPPY COMMUNITY

We are very happy to see the data back up our theory that investors deeply desire the ability to amalgamate and discuss individual stock investments in a civilized community.

However, we are even happier to read the reaction of our members. Here are just some of the raving testimonials we’ve been able to pull from the site so far.

While we’re talking about our members, I want to take this moment to thank each and every one of them for believing in our model, spreading the word and breathing life into it. Without them, this would be one hell of an application with no users. A special thanks goes out to all HUB Leaders that abandoned their former communities at Stockhouse, Raging Bull, Yahoo Finance and others in hopes of a better experience. I’m glad our promises to you have been fulfilled.

STATUS QUO ISN’T SHAKING – YET

Now, I know we haven’t shaken any boots at the big 3 (AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft) just yet but the numbers and testimonials clearly show we have tabled a solution that is far more appealing to investors that are no longer willing to accept the unacceptable.

Until now, the trash has ruled the day, forcing the masses to abandon discussion forums and conduct due diligence either on their own, or in small groups. It is inefficient but it is the best option we’ve had for nearly a decade.

Eventually, the market corrects inefficiencies and AGORACOM has set its sights on correcting this one.

By refusing to sacrifice quality for quantity, AGORACOM is attracting and will continue to attract smart and conscientious investors that understand the wisdom of crowds. Eventually, quality begets quality and a massive community that both generates its own content and moderates itself will replace the status quo.

BLOGS CAN NOT REPLACE DISCUSSION FORUMS

With the advent of financial blogs – and some pretty great ones that include Paul Kedrosky, Roger Ehrenberg and Marck McQueen to name but a few – some might argue discussion forums are no longer necessary, even outdated. Don’t make that mistake. Blogs are great for insight into the most important economic issues from a wide array of great minds. However, they rarely stay focused on a particular topic for more than a week, if not a day.

Stock discussion forums, on the other hand, provide investors with an ability to exchange ideas and analyze one particular stock 24/7/365. You might read about macro events (i.e. sub-prime) on a blog but figuring out how it impacts your specific stock investments requires a micro discussion that blogs can not provide.

CONCLUSION

This is Wiki meets IGC (investor generated content) at its finest. There are bigger communities to be sure – but can you find another vertical in which the need for a drastically more efficient model is more needed? Trillions of dollars are at stake. People’s futures are at stake. We can DIGG for this and research on Wikipedia for that but what are their implications for inefficient or imperfect information?

Stock discussion forums are vital to the lives of so many people. I believe we are about to witness a paradigm shift that makes them valuable once again. Stay tuned for more.

Regards,
George

AGORACOM US IR Programs Now Include Bloomberg TV and CNBC TV

Posted by AGORACOM at 11:12 AM on Friday, February 1st, 2008

AGORACOM is proud to announce that our US Investor Relations programs now include the ability to reach investors via Bloomberg Television and CNBC TV. These incredible tools were made available thanks to our powerful partners at Google, who are now handling offline ad space for the likes of (TV) Bloomberg, CNBC (Newspapers) New York Times (Radio) Clear Channel.

ONLINE VS. OFFLINE

Though the primary focus (98%) of our partnership with Google is targeting and attracting new online investors, we also understand the value of a highly targeted offline audience. Specifically, investors viewing prime-time stock market television programming between the hours of 5PM and 8PM, every Monday to Thursday. That’s right, no 2AM slots on Sunday nights that others have tried to push in the past. This is strictly prime-time.

As such, via our partnership with Google, we are now able to target investors viewing Bloomberg Television and CNBC during this time slot on the Dish Satellite Network.

BLOOMBERG AND CNBC DEMOGRAPHICS ARE IDEAL FOR SMALL-CAPS

CNBC TV and Bloomberg TV are North American’s most respected business channels, airing business and financial news 24 hours a day. The quality of their prime-time programming between 5 – 8 PM make their combined audience the most valuable business audience in the United States. The Mendelsohn Affluent Surve has found that Bloomberg TV viewers have an average household income of $199,000, the highest of any cable network it measures. CNBC viewers have an average household income of $184,000.

IDEAL FOR SMALL-CAP BUDGETS

Dish Network provides Satellite TV to 13,000,000 households and businesses across the United States. The demographic and audience size are actually ideally suited for small-cap companies. Namely, an affluent but affordable audience size.

HOW ABOUT ALL THOSE PVR’S SKIPPING COMMERCIALS?

If you thought about this, then you are on the same page with us as this was one of the first questions we asked. You will love the answer. The combination of Satellite technology and Google tracking provides the valuable benefit of being able to track and not count any ads in which a viewer changes the channel within the first 8 seconds.

As such, you don’t have to worry about dilution of your ad spend due to skipped commercials….and focus on acquiring new shareholders via a couple of great mediums. If you have a great story to tell, let’s talk. Please send e-mail to:

AIR at AGORACOM.com

Regards,
George

AGORACOM (Resource) Client Success Stories – Yep, They’re Happy

Posted by AGORACOM at 9:04 AM on Monday, January 28th, 2008

The Vancouver Cambridge Conference is over and it was a great event. We had a chance to meet so many of our new members that have migrated to AGORACOM over the past 3 months, as well as, all the public companies that make it such a success. We were also proud to be a sponsor yet again.

During the conference, many investors and companies asked to see our track record of success, so we’re only too happy to oblige via the following presentation of AGORACOM (Resource) Client Success Stories. You will note we also included success stories from 2006.

We’ll continue to update it every 60 days, so look for more success story posts in the future.

Thanks and have a great day.

Regards,
George

Google Now Controls 65% Of Search – The Greatest Investor Relations Tool Ever

Posted by AGORACOM at 3:37 PM on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008

The New York Times is reporting that Google now accounts for 65.1% of all searches in the United States. In Canada, that number is closer to 70%. How dominant is Google? 3X bigger than Yahoo and 9X bigger than Microsoft. Google is the undisputed heavyweight champion.If you are like most small-cap CEO’s, you are probably wondering “why should I care?”

Answer
: Google is a $200 billion company because of their ability to do one thing – matching people who are looking for something with people who provide something. Until now, unless you are an AGORACOM client, you’ve always been the one looking for something. Vacation spots, airfare, research, stuff for your kids, the best all-season tires for your car … you use Google over and over to find things.

When are you going to use Google to be found?

Small-Cap investors use Google to find new ideas everyday. I know because AGORACOM and its clients are the ones being found everyday. Why aren’t you using Google to be found? When are you going to use Google to be found?

If you are not using allowing Google to help you find investors, then you are missing out on the greatest investor relations tool ever invented.

If you want to start being found, e-mail me at: [email protected]

Regards,
George

Presidential Candidate – Ron Paul – Says Gold Market Has Been Rigged For Decades

Posted by AGORACOM at 7:48 PM on Thursday, January 10th, 2008

Gold bugs are jamming the airwaves today after Ron Paul – Republican Presidential Candidate – stated that central banks around the world have been colluding to keep gold down for the last 20 years by “dumping it”. You can watch him make the statement in this 2 1/2 minute interview with TheStreet.com

People like Bill Murphy at Le Metropole Cafe and The Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA) have been pounding the table on this issue for years but have often been dismissed as extremists, conspiracy theorists and even quacks.

However, their theory has started to find real support in recent years, beginning with John Embry’s publication of “Not Free, Not Fair: The Long Term Manipulation Of The Gold Price”

Now, you’ve got Ron Paul saying the gold market has been rigged for decades. In case you did not know, Paul has served on the House Banking committee and currently serves on the House Committee on Financial Services and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Nobody will ever be able to confirm the collusion but these are all some pretty smart people. The John Embry piece is a must read if you want to know the basis of the collusion argument and be able to judge for yourself. However, if they are right, the natural laws of money and economics are eventually going to takeover and gold is going to erupt from the pent-up pressure.

Ultimately, this may be the only evidence of collusion and manipulation claims.

EVIDENCE OF ALAN GREENSPAN MANIPULATION IN 1998

Personally, I started getting suspicious when Alan Greenspan went on what was essentially a “sell your bullion and buy US paper” tour back in 1998/99 around the time of the Long Term Capital Management crisis that almost single handedly took down the stock market. Central Banks around the world started selling off their gold reserves like a post-holiday fire sale. The Bank of England sold 60% of its reserves. Clearly, something was up.

Around that same time he also stated “Central banks stand ready to lease gold in increasing quantities should the price rise.” Again, something was clearly up. I found another article from TheStreet.com dated May 7, 1999 that neatly summarizes this period.

In the meantime, the spot price of gold is now trading at $894. Wow.

Regards,
George

AGORACOM Interview Picked Up By Financial Post Trading Desk

Posted by AGORACOM at 7:13 AM on Tuesday, December 11th, 2007

Our latest “Expert’s Corner interview with Peter Grandich was picked up by the Financial Post. We taped the interview for our new content partners at Globe Investor and syndicated it via our industry leading podcast site SmallCapPodcast.com. Jonathan Ratner of FP picked it up and ran the story. The distribution power of the web in Web 2.0 is unbelievable. Tags, keywords, blogs, podcasts…if you don’t know what these mean then you better get on the ball or hire someone who is. Otherwise, you are going to get trounced by your competitors.

Regards,
George

AGORACOM Small-Cap TV – 6 Great Press Releases At The Open (December 5th)

Posted by AGORACOM at 9:53 AM on Wednesday, December 5th, 2007

Good morning to you all. Please find enclosed a summary of the great small-cap and micro-cap press releases we highlighted on our TV show this morning. It’s November 27th and we’ve found 7 great press releases from both sides of the border to report on at the open. Another great day for the small-cap and micro-cap world.

You can watch AGORACOM TV right from our home page , or our archive where you can see or search all of our previous shows.

If you are new to the show, it is a daily, fast-paced, edgy report that we put out at or before the open everyday that strictly reports on the best small cap and micro cap press releases of the day in 3-5 minutes. You can watch the show by going to AGORACOM every morning.

Our daily show focuses on content over form so that you can get profitable information into your hands as fast as possible. The same holds true for these blog entries where I simply cut and paste my TV notes for your benefit, without any editing.

If you have any material information pertaining to any of today’s companies, be sure to share your knowledge by posting your comments for everyone to see.

As always, don’t forget to visit the AGORACOM Marketplace where we list compelling summaries for over 65 great small-cap companies that you can sort by exchange and industry to suit your personal investing tastes.

Now, onto our show notes for the day.

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