AGORACOM Small-cap Investor Relations Blog

The Globe & Mail reported a story yesterday that the OSC is considering setting up a scam squad to battle pump n’ dump boiler rooms and e-mail spammers.  We at AGORACOM would applaud any such initiative by the OSC.  E-mail spam is at all-time highs now, making up close to 20% of all spam we receive on a daily basis.

An annoyance to most people, stock spam actually hurts the small-cap industry because it paints the entire industry as one of pump n’ dumpers that need to spam in order to promote their stocks.  We all know differently and that this is the raison d’etre of AGORACOM – but penalizing companies and unscrupulous promoters is good for everyone.

Will the OSC go through with it? 

In an interview following his speech, Mr. Wilson said the proposal for the scam unit came from the commission’s enforcement division and hasn’t been approved yet, but will be considered in coming weeks as the OSC sets its budget for the coming year. He said he doesn’t know how much such a unit would cost, but said it would be assessed on a cost-benefit basis.

I sure hope they take into account the intangible side of this equation.

Best,
George

Today’s announcement by Patriot Scientific is the very reason I started this blog recently.  Specifically, a great example of a real OTCBB company, as opposed to the junk we are forced to hear about via stock spam campaigns.

Patriot announced that it will issue a cash dividend of $0.02 per share of common stock for shareholders and qualified warrant holders of record as of March 6, 2007. The dividend is payable April 9, 2007.  The news drove PTSC up 29% on about 5.5 million shares of volume.  Even if you bought PTSC at the close of trading today, that still amounts to a 2.6% yield.

Comments from Chairman and CEO David Pohl indicate this probably won’t be the last dividend payment to investors:

“We want our shareholders to participate in our share of the revenues generated by our jointly owned MMP Patent Portfolio,” said David Pohl, chairman and CEO of Patriot Scientific Corporation. “In furtherance of this philosophy, our board of directors has now adopted a policy of paying a dividend every six months, subject each time to a determination by the board that payment of a dividend would then be reasonable and prudent in light of the financial condition of the company, other possible applications of the company’s available resources, and relevant business considerations,” Pohl stated.

Congratulations to Patriot Scientific investors and – more importantly – thanks for demonstrating to the world that great quality can be found in the small and micro-cap world.

Best,
George

David Feldman of the Reverse Merger Blog has some great pointers about shell companies that suddenly start to trade heavy volumes on little or no news.  He spefically mentiones the following 3 time periods:

• Before Any Announcement
• After Announcing an LOI or Agreement
• After Closing A Merger

If you’ve ever been left holding the bag, or don’t ever want to be left holding the bag, take 5 minutes to review his article.

Regards,
George
 

Small-cap uranium deals continue to see massive gains. Today’s latest star is Majescor Resources that gained more than 48% on more than 12,000,000 shares traded.  That is not a typo.  Here is the Yahoo Finance Canada summary:

http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/q?s=MAJ.V

The PDAC Conference (March 4-7 in Toronto) is the biggest mining conference in the world and will no doubt display some great fireworks displays in the Uranium space.

Regards,
George

Greetings from Vancouver folks. If you had any doubts as to the strength of the junior resource markets, this show has put them to rest. Almost 10,000 investors showed up to meet just under 400 companies and the best newsletter writers in the business.

This could also be taken as a contrarian indicator that we are reaching a market top but I don’t see frothy prices in the juniors – certainly not like the Bre-X fueled mid-90’s. In addition, most retail investors I speak to are cautiously optimistic, a very good sign this market still has plenty of legs.

On the topic of newsletter writers, have a close look at the writings of Peter Grandich (www.grandich.com). He is paid by companies but I admire the fact the hand that feeds him does not dictate his market commentary. For example, despite having gold, copper and uranium clients, he has successfully called short-term tops in each of those markets and advised readers to take profits. It has cost him a couple of clients who felt they had been “betrayed” but it gained him far more credibility amongst readers and industry observers.