Mercer Gold (MRGP.ob) five day chart: What rhymes with 'pump'?
So a couple of weeks ago we ran this post that noted our opinion of a Colombian gold play named Mercer Gold (MRGP.ob), a junior on the US OTC market. Then, by way of right to reply, we ran this post that included director and geologist Keith Laskowski's differing opinion on points raised by this humble author's position.
All fair enough and we admired (and still admire) Laskowski's wherewithall in replying, pushing back on the IKN post and also agreeing to allow his mail to be put in the public sphere. Here at IKN nerve centre we have no problem about that and no problem at all over the potential of the Guayabales deposit as explained by its director, but once again we're forced to raise a red flag on the stock as today it's getting its name screamed at the naive by bullshit boilerhouse pennystock pump houses in some sort of paid-for in-cahoots concerted promo push.
This morning, A. Reader sent on two spam mailshots received from a company known as hotstocked. The first one was received last night and said this:
Greetings!We will be sending out a new lightning pick alert tomorrow morning on a gold mining company. Last week's lightning pick jumped 20% the first day, and was almost 30% higher within 2 days of the alert. Tomorrow's pick will be very exciting.As you know, gold is the strongest section of the markets these days. With gold prices hitting new highs each day, demand for mininng stocks is especially strong. Tomorrow, we are teaming up with a few other very large newsletters and will all be notifying all of our subscribers that the stock looks excellent for a trade.We need to keep the idea a secret for now. We will send you an e-mail with the exact details right when the market opens, if for some reason you don't receive the e-mail by 9:30, we will also post the stock pick on this page: http://www.hotstocked.com/lightning-picks/.See you when the market opens. Hotstocked Team
Then this morning, the same reader sent this one in (IKN highlights in red):
Good Morning,Our lightning pick for today is Mercer Gold Corp. (OTC:MRGP), which closed last Friday at $0.50. They have just announced the first positive and even better than expected results on their newly acquired gold mining property in Colombia. The stock should now correspondingly move along with the next steps in the exploration program, which they are fully funded to carry out.
MRGP stock is currently excellent for trading as the technical indicators will attract many traders:
- Very good support at 50 cents, the next resistance at $0.67
- Accum/Dist has just reversed to point straight up
- MACD indicator is also highly bullish; the RSI shows high buying potential
The fundamental support:
- Over $1.1 million in cash in the bank
- No long term-debt
- Positive exploration results
In April this year, MRGP signed an agreement about an exclusive 100% interest in the property known as the “Guayabales” property, located in Marmato, Colombia. In short, the company raised $2 million for the exploration through a private placement in May, which amount should be enough to follow strictly the exploration program on the “Guayabales” property over the next twelve months, meaning to complete Phase I and to start Phase II.
First results from the initial sampling have just been announced last week and they have been extremely positive. The Marmato district in Colombia is a prolific region with many mining companies having interests near the “Guayabales” property, some of those companies trading far above $1, and with much higher market caps.
Conclusion: Gold is hot, and MRGP is making fast progress. In the short term this stock can easily get to the $0.60 - $0.67 range, longer term more positive exploration results can take this stock much higher.
Happy Trading, Hotstocked Team
So what we have is this hotstocked outfit priming a whole swathe of sheep via its first mail, then just minutes after the bell letting out the name of its target, none other than our old friend Mercer Gold (MRGP.ob). But then if you follow the breadcrumb trail, we get to find out a lot more about hotstocked. Firstly, this line was included in the mailshot as part of the company disclaimer (IKN highlights in red):
Hotstocked.com has been compensated two thousand five hundred dollars by Blue Wave Advisors for the distribution of this particular email. This compensation constitutes a conflict of interest as to our ability to remain objective in our communication regarding the profiled company. Hotstocked.com does not own shares, but a third party may own shares and may intend to sell immediately following this advertisement.
Yup, amazingly enough hotstocked isn't doing this out of the goodness of its heart but in fact is paid 2.5k for its efforts. Not bad for one morning. So the next question is "Who is 'Blue Wave Advisors?", because they may just be...y'know, sneaking suspicions and all that....the people that "may intend to sell immediately" (see chart and trading action above). Well, its website doesn't give much away, but do a bit of digging and it's easy enough to find out more. This next excerpt from this page:
"Beacon Equity Research, a Texas-based stock promotion firm, employs a stable of CFAs to write research reports for junior companies that trade on the dreadful OTC Bulletin Board and Pink Sheets in the United States. These reports routinely make "speculative buy" recommendations for companies that have no real hope of turning into real businesses.
"In many cases, these reports are served up in conjunction with aggressive spam campaigns designed to incite unsophisticated investors into investing in these nags, many of which have close connections to Vancouver.
"Beacon's research reports and attendant spam campaigns are financed by private third-party firms whose beneficial owners are never revealed, but are almost certainly closely connected to the companies' insiders. In some cases, these third parties pay up to $1 million for what are euphemistically called "investor awareness" programs."
Baines then goes on to highlight a few examples of how Beacon Equity has been operating, with scam-ridden tales and SEC charges all over the place.
So, let's recap: Mercer Gold (MRGP.ob) gets pumped by hotstocked dot com, who freely admit their working as a cartel along with other bullshit pump houses on the stock today, September 20th 2010. Hotstocked is paid to pump MRGP.ob by Blue Wave, which just happens to be the owner of a really nasty scamhouse known as Beacon Equity as well as having its tentacles in all sorts of other places. But of course, the people at MRGP want IKN and its readership to believe that the company is the real deal, not a bullshit pump and a prospect we can take seriously. Would the company be interested in replying to this post, too?