Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Identifying a gold stock scam


So yet again the idiots pumpers at Constitution Mining (CMIN.ob) (who seem to be largely based in Switzerland, for some reason or another) have been sending in their considered opinions via mail. They're missing a point here; it doesn't matter whether a scam stock's price goes up or down, it's still a scam! In fact the whole point of running these scumball activities is to make the price go up and attract in the sheep....only the most amateur of scams are based around stocks that sell at $0.001 for long periods.

So how do you spot a scam? Easy, you do something that the vast majority of idiot sheep never do in their investment lives (and then wonder why they're still poor 30 years later): YOU READ THE REGULATORY FILINGS!

By way of another example (because there are far more scams out there than just CMIN.ob and I've written more than enough to show just how shaky this bullshit company is already) here's another example, that of an alluvial gold mining junior called "Affinity Gold Corp.". It is listed in the USA under the OTC ticker (AFYGE.ob) but hardly trades. However, it's also listed in Frankfurt under the ticker (79F.f) where, by some miracle, it actually averages a few thousand shares traded per day.

Why is it a miracle? Just look at the latest quarterly:

  • Current Assets (i.e. cash): $23,044
  • Fixed assets (i.e. a number picked out the sky as a value on a truly worthless land holding): $12.7m
  • Current Debt (i.e. what it needs to pay to keep running): $147,683

The company has no cash, no production, not even close to making any money and owes more than it has. Even if you are stupid enough to believe its properties are worth the number printed on its books, the whole caboodle is worth $12.7m or so.

Now here's the rub: The company has 51.2 million shares out and they trade at or around €4 (to be precise it's trading at €4.11 right now). In other words, it has a market cap of around €210m.

Asset value $12.7m and market cap twenty-four times bigger = scam. End of story.

DYODD dudettes and dudes. Stop believing everything you read around one of the most scam-ridden sectors of business. Read the REG Fs, for crying out loud! Mark Twain nailed it over a hundred and fifty years ago and nothing much has changed since then, so if you just nod your head and believe everything the gold scammers tell you without checking for facts you deserve to lose your money to these criminals.