I’m not an investor. I’m a predator, a stormtrooper of profit, an apex money huntsman who doesn’t roll dice on a deal but jumps in when I know the rules are rigged for my benediction. As a company, I favour AMPD Ventures (AMPD.C). I think it will build a nice business and generate wealth for those involved and the people who operate it appear to know their work.
But right now, it’s a viper’s nest of shorts, paper flips, and dumb short term thinking by players who are far less smart than they think they are, all of which is happening outside the company’s sphere of influence.
In short, this galleon is being battered by heavy tides and can merely float along, unmoored, destined for wherever the tides would take it, until the storm has passed.
What brought the HMS AMPD to this point is a tight share structure and non-promo focused management. I know that’s something most investors would be looking for in a deal, but it’s also, sadly, what stock manipulators look for.
If every buy or sell finds not a lot of available stock out there to be bought or sold, the stock will move wildly in either direction on any trade. And if it’s a newly listed stock, which doesn’t yet have a fanbase, then there’s nobody there to defend it when the carrion crawlers come to devour it.
We saw that sort of action out of the gate, with a quick double from the $0.35 pre-listing financing up to $0.70, and then a hard drop as someone decided to take their profits, and short into the bargain.
Our friends at Equity.Guru have been homers for AMPD, and even got themselves involved in fighting off the shorts, which gave the company room enough to announce (and I’m reliably informed, fill) a $2m financing at $0.40. It’s good to have friends who’ll go to the wall for you, clearly.
But any forward run expected will have to wait a while..
A small acquisition was announced this morning, which should have been rocket fuel for a rise, but instead saw another trade downwards. The bottom end of this appears to be $0.35 – the same point as the pre-listing raise – which tells me someone from that raise is trading out, and appears to be doing so consistently.
Annoying for true believers, but a temporary state to be sure.
Here’s the thing: The company is now going to be cashed up (they maintain they’re very low on the expense side, and $2m will see them through about a year at current balance sheet numbers even if they experienced no new business in that time). The company also doesn’t need to concern itself with more raises in the short term, and if it can move a little forward on news will find a decent number of warrants out there at $0.50 or so.
So – if we’re to look forward, we see a few things we know to be true.
- The shorting stops at $0.35 because, I suspect, that’s where the shorters bought their stock to begin with. We’re seeing that level today.
- When the shorting stops, and is covered, we should see significant upward motion.
- There’s not much room for downward pressure from here, because the market cap is $13m right now and that’s really cheap.
- German promo sucks and has no stroke right now, and anyone paying for it is burning money. AMPD played with ze germans and a short Google search shows they got literally zero to show for it.
What I want to see before I get back in the pool:
- The financing must close. Over-subscribed would be nice, just to show some confidence. Would also like to see AMPD insiders taking part, for the same reasons.
- The sellers at $0.35 will be around for a bit. They’re just going to need to work through their paper before we take AMPD seriously.
- When that happens – when we see the $0.35+ asks subside – it’ll be buying time.
My opinion is, one should not buy AMPD while this horseplay is being engaged in.
But one might like to keep a finger on the trigger, just in case things move fast.
— Taint, Esq